Skip to main content
View expanded cover

International Conference on Digital Transformation and Global Society

DTGS 2018: Digital Transformation and Global Society pp 255–265Cite as

Crowd Sourced Monitoring in Smart Cities in the United Kingdom

Part of the Communications in Computer and Information Science book series (CCIS,volume 858)

Abstract

Smart cities can be regarded as the latest administrative reform and digital innovation in most metropolitan cities globally. In smart cities as well as in former urban New Public Management modernization and Post Weberian reforms, the important role of the citizens in planning as well as monitoring has been highlighted. Online and offline participation along with feedback can reinvigorate town planning and policymaking as well as policy monitoring processes at the local level. The UK as many other countries reacted to this trend by offering new channels for online participation. The new participative innovations allowed for more participation and more influence by citizen. FixMyStreet is a crowdsourced monitoring instrument implemented in the UK. How it works, what the role of the state and civil society represent, and is crowd monitoring vote-centric or talk-centric will be discussed in the paper. It represents a successful bottom-up innovation approach that was used by numerous municipalities. It is a successful public private partnership and a mix between ‘invented’ and ‘invited’ space, where the role of the state is redefined.

Keywords

  • Crowd sourcing
  • Smart city
  • Participation

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-02843-5_20
  • Chapter length: 11 pages
  • Instant PDF download
  • Readable on all devices
  • Own it forever
  • Exclusive offer for individuals only
  • Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout
eBook
USD   84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • ISBN: 978-3-030-02843-5
  • Instant PDF download
  • Readable on all devices
  • Own it forever
  • Exclusive offer for individuals only
  • Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout
Softcover Book
USD   109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
Learn about institutional subscriptions
Fig. 1.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 3.

References

  1. Aitamurto, T.: Crowdsourcing for Democracy: A New Era in Policy-Making. Publications of the Committee for the Future. Parliament of Finland 1/2012, Helsinki, Finland (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Baldersheim, H., Kersting, N. (eds.): The Wired City: A New Face of Power?: A Citizen Perspective. In: Oxford Handbook of Urban Politics. Oxford University, Oxford, pp. 590–607 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Barber, B.: Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age. California University Press, Berkeley (1984)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Baringhorst, S.: Internet und Protest. Zum Wandel von Organisationsformen und Handlungsrepertoires – ein Überblick. In: Voss, K. (Hrsg.) Internet & Partizipation. Bottom-up oder Top-down? Politische Beteiligungsmöglichkeiten im Internet. Springer VS, Wiesbaden, pp. 91–114 (2014)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  5. Beck, U.: Living in the World Risk Society. Econ. Soc. 35(3), 329–345 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1080/03085140600844902

    MathSciNet  CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  6. Budge, I.: The New Challenge of Direct Democracy. Cambridge: Polity. 2001. ‘Political Parties in Direct Democracy’ (1996). In: Mendelson, M., Brabham, A., Daren, C. (eds.) Moving the Crowd at iStockphoto: The Composition of the Crowd and Motivations for Participation in a Crowdsourcing Application (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Brabham, D.: Crowdsourcing the public participation process for planning projects. Plan. Theory 8, 242–262 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1177/1473095209104824

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  8. Brabham, D.: Moving the crowd at threadless. Inf. Commun. Soc. 13, 1122–1145 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1080/13691.181003624090

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  9. Chourabi, H., et al.: Understanding Smart cities. In: Hawaii International Conference (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  10. CIO Council. Homepage: Transformational Local Government: Discussion Paper. http://www.cio.gov.uk/documents/pdf/transgov/trans_local_gov060328.pdf. Accessed 28 Apr 2006

  11. Della, P.: Clandestine Political Violence. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2013)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  12. Diamond, L., Morlino L.: The quality of democracy. In: Diamond, L., (ed.) In Search of Democracy. Routledge, London (2016). https://doi.org/10.4236/ajc.2015.31003

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  13. FixMystreet Homepage: Free statistics for councils. www.fixmystreet.com. Accessed 12 Nov 2017

  14. Howe, J.: Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business. Three Rivers Press, New York (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523531

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  15. Kersting, N., Baldersheim, H.: Electronic Voting and Democracy: A Comparative Analysis. Palgrave Macmillan, UK (2004)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  16. Kersting, N. (ed.): Politische Beteiligung: Einführung in dialogorientierte Instrumente politischer und gesellschaftlicher Partizipation. VS - Springer, Wiesbaden (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Kersting, N., et al.: Local Governance Reform in Global Perspective. Springer VS, Wiesbaden (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-91686-6_1

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  18. Kersting, N.: The Future of Electronic Democracy. In: Kersting, N. (ed.) 2012: Electronic Democracy, pp. 11–54. Barbara Budrich, Opladen (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Kersting, N.: Online participation: from ‘invited’ to ‘invented’spaces. Int. J. Electron. Governance 4, 270–280 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1504/IJEG.2013.060650

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  20. Kersting, N.: Participatory turn? comparing citizens’ and politicians’ perspectives on online and offline local political participation. Lex Localis, J. Local Self-Gov. 14(2), 225–246 (2015). https://doi.org/10.4335/14.2.249-263

    MathSciNet  CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  21. Kersting, N.: Demokratische Innovation: Qualifizierung und Anreicherung der lokalen repräsentativen Demokratie. In: Kersting, N. (ed.) Urbane Innovation, pp. 81–120. Springer VS, Wiesbaden (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-07321-3

    Google Scholar 

  22. Kersting, N., Caulfield, J., Nickson, A., Olowu, D., Wollmann, H.: Local Governance Reform in Global Perspective. VS Verlag. Wiesbaden, Germany (2009)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  23. King, S., Brown, P.: Fix My street or else: using the internet to voice local public service concerns. In: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV 2007), Macao, China, pp. 10–13 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Komninos, N.: What makes cities intelligent? In: Deakin, M. (ed.) Smart Cities: Governing: Modelling and Analysing the Transition. Taylor and Francis, London (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Roussopoulos, D., Benello, G. (eds.): Participatory Democracy: Prospects for Democratizing Democracy. Black Rose Books, Portland (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Schaal, G.: Die Theorie der e-democracy. In: Lembcke, O., Ritzi, C., Schaal, G. (ed.) Demokratietheorie. Band 2: Normative Demokratietheorien. VS-Verlag, Wiesbaden (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Seltzer, E., Mahmoudi, D.: Citizen participation, open innovation and crowdsourcing: challenges and opportunities for planning. J. Plan. Lit. 28(1), 3–18 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1177/0885412212469112

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  28. Smith, G.: Democratic Innovations: Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2009)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  29. Steiberg, T.: 98% of councils accept FixMyStreet reports. Here’s how we cope with the rest. https://www.mysociety.org/2015/07/29/98-of-councils-accept-fixmystreet-reports-heres-how-we-cope-with-the-rest/. Accessed 12 Nov 2017

  30. Musa, S.: Smart cities - a roadmap for development. J. Telecommun. Syst. Manag. 5, 144 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  31. New York City Government: Building a smart + Equitable City. http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/forward/documents/NYC-Smart-Equitable-City-Final.pdf. Accessed 12 Nov 2017

  32. Zhao, Y.Z., Zhu, Q.H.: Evaluation on crowdsourcing research: current status and future direction. Inf. Syst. Front. 16, 417–434 (2012)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Political Science, Westfälische Wilhelms-University Münster, Scharnhorststr. 100, 48151, Münster, Germany

    Norbert Kersting & Yimei Zhu

Authors
  1. Norbert Kersting
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Yimei Zhu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yimei Zhu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Research University Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Daniel A. Alexandrov

  2. Saint Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Alexander V. Boukhanovsky

  3. Saint Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Andrei V. Chugunov

  4. National Research University Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Yury Kabanov

  5. National Research University Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Olessia Koltsova

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Kersting, N., Zhu, Y. (2018). Crowd Sourced Monitoring in Smart Cities in the United Kingdom. In: Alexandrov, D., Boukhanovsky, A., Chugunov, A., Kabanov, Y., Koltsova, O. (eds) Digital Transformation and Global Society. DTGS 2018. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 858. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02843-5_20

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02843-5_20

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02842-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02843-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)