On de Lange and de Waal, “Owning the city: New media and citizen engagement in urban design.” First Monday
-The authors argue that city dwellers should neither be expected to trade in their freedom of choice and autonomy for a community of homogeneous parochiality, nor supposed to be blasé about shared concerns of the commons (section#3). Looking beyond scenarios of compromise between one or the other of the prominent opposing modes of citizen engagement, the authors underline the need to create a common ground. What would the role of ICT be in addressing the current opposition? What kind of digital media would support such a paradigm shift towards the hybridization of the two extremes?
-In an attempt to redefine or expand the concept of community, de Waal and de Lange refer to Varnelis’ “networked publics” to describe the ways that assemble themselves around shared concerns, strengthened by their differences and organized through distributed networks (section#3). What architectures would enable ‘networked publics’ to come together and influence their environment? Are those spatial configurations more likely to reach a certain mature form or are they instead in a continuous process of production by the ‘networked publics’?
on Kitchin, “Rethinking, Reimagining and Remaking Smart Cities,” Programmable City
-After tracing the two sides of the smart urbanism coin, Kitchin notes it is high time the constructive critique on smart cities matured into “concrete advice” (pp.6) for making smart cities, notably in a proactive manner – as if their networked and mobile ICTs are already fully in place. Later on, he suggests that governing bodies should be the first to lead this process to form and address normative questions and then coordinate smart city initiatives accordingly (pp.7). What kind of institutional and legal framework could grant city administrations with a more dynamic, ad-hoc role in the smart city discussion, instead of them being merely ‘clients’?
-Another challenge is to redefine smart governance and its technologies towards a more open, transparent and diverse “suite of solutions” (pp.8) or “interventions” (pp.11) where technical, socio-cultural, political and administrational parameters converge. What would the rules (and ratios) of such a complex and ambitious blend comprise of? How and by whom could these be written?