Abstract
The term “smart city” has been used extensively by technologists and the media to describe a place where modern technologies, mostly information and communications technologies (ICTs), are widely used by local governments, institutions, and citizens. Technology is always seen as a way forward. “The more, the better. They will be beneficial to citizens eventually, in one way or another.”
Or will they?
Well, maybe, but not necessarily. This chapter argues that the humane side of urban planning should be taken into account first. Humane is not only one of the dimensions of a proposed solution. It is the dimension to guide all the others. In fact, every city project should start with a clear definition of what is the actual citizen’s problem that is being solved, and its results should be measured against that goal. For instance, a control center is a costly and useful tool to measure and orientate car traffic in the city. But its cost should be evaluated and compared against other solutions that improve mobility of citizens in town, not mobility of cars. There is a subtle difference here. Mobility of car drivers is not a measure of citizen’s mobility as a whole. A proper bike lane or an improvement in the public transportation system, for instance, may offer much better and cheaper solutions when the focus is changed from the car to the citizen.
Once citizens’ wishes, interests, and needs are clearly identified, technology will be, of course, part of the solution. It is just a question of resetting priorities: people and the environment first; then, comes everything else.
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Further Reading
Costa, E. M., & Oliveira, Á. D. (2017). Humane smart cities. In R. Frodeman, J. T. Klein, & R. C. Pacheco (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of interdisciplinarity (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Yigitcanlar, T., Kamruzzaman, M., Foth, M., Sabatini, J., Costa, E. M., & Ioppolo, G. (2018). Can cities become smart without being sustainable? A systematic review of the literature. Sustainable Cities and Society. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2018.11.033.
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Costa, E.M. (2021). Smart Cities Can Be More Humane and Sustainable Too. In: Augusto, J.C. (eds) Handbook of Smart Cities. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69698-6_3
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