E Participation in Smart Cities

“Technological innovations enable citizens to acquire more autonomy and relative independence from centralized, authority-based decision-making processes. In line with that autonomy, self-governance by communities of citizens is a key topic in the broader spectrum of socio-technical changes around smart cities.”

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In this book, Manuel Bolívar and Laura Muñoz explore many different topics regarding e-participation, from the how’s and why’s of citizen engagement and self-governance to the technologies fostering it.

Smart Cities and E-Government are a huge governance trend. However, not many cities are approaching these initiatives by actively engaging their citizens. Instead, the authors find that many smart city actions have been done in a top-down manner: Services are delivered to the citizens, but without implementing substantive contributions from the citizens or being cocreated by the citizens.

The book then explains the different benefits that can be derived from an increased amount of ICT enabled citizen participation. Among them are making public institutions more efficient and democratic, increasing the legitimacy of municipal decisions, as well as pushing for more openness and transparency in government.

The different models of e-participation are also described and explored. These are namely the managerial (of one-way service delivery), the consultative (in which governments ask for input) and the participatory (where citizens’ votes are responsible for results, such as online polling and voting).

Furthermore, various channels where e-civic participation takes place are elucidated. Social Media, City Apps, Hackathons and Citizen Relationship Management Systems (CiRM) are some of the examples. However, the authors make skeptical remarks of initiatives that focus only on the digital and forget the social aspect, since systems with a “human touch” provide an interaction style that positively influences citizen participation.

An impressive amount of research backs ups the findings and policy recommendations: The articles contain cases and data from major and minor cities from all over Europe, the US, South Africa and Brazil. The different characteristics of the cities studied allow for a better understanding of variations in Smart City actions depending on variables such as political profile, city size and funding.

The book is split into 4 parts containing 10 articles in total, in which the authors explore e-Participation in the Smart Cities context, the existing e-Participation models, organizational issues, and the existing incentives for participation.

Creators of zones and societies will find in chapters 5, 6, and 7 a community self-governance framework, the models of e-participation and a framework for prioritizing smart city initiatives.

Policymakers and analysts can refer to chapters 8, 9, and 10 to understand the determinant factors in citizen engagement, the different problematics facing smart cities in the developing world and the review of the previous chapters’ conclusions.

Scholars and experts may read chapters 1 to 4 to understand the differences in conceptualization from cocreation to coproduction, the state-of-the-art of citizen relationship management systems, and the tools and the degree to which smart cities currently support citizen engagement.

The book can be found here.

Written by: Francisco Litvay