Owning the city: new media and citizen engagement in urban design by Michael de Lange and Martijn de Waal
- “ Ownership teases out a number of shifts that take place in the urban public domain characterized by tensions between individuals and collectives, between differences and similarities, and between conflict and collaboration.”… “When grounds are shifting, urban design professionals as well as citizens need to consider their own role in city making.”
How does regulation affect ownership in the urban public domain? Does accountability come into play when citizens participate in making cities? Dumb citizens or citizens that choose not to participate would there lack of participation still include in the context of “ownership”.
- “Central is the question how collaborative principles and participatory ethics from online culture can be ported to the urban realm in order to coordinate collective action and help solve some of the urgent complex issues that cities are facing.”
What are the principles and participatory ethics from online culture? How would this bring about an action? Would this include policies of regulation and implementation? Would they include citizen’s opinions? In order to coordinate collective action would collective engagement and action lead to a better solutions and its integration into the urban fabric. What is he referring to when he says, ‘wicked problems’ – “Moreover a single intervention may catalyze unforeseen events that alter the initial state Because of this complexity such issues have been called ‘wicked problems’.”
- “We have shown how digital media have created a number of qualitative shifts in the way publics can be engaged with, organized around and act upon collective issues. These shifts mean that it has become easier for many citizens to organize themselves and take ownership of particular issues. In turn, this may lead not only to new ways in which social life is organized, but also to new ways of shaping the built environment. We also argued that a culturally sensitive approach to the grassroots initiatives are organized around decentralized networks; they certainly are not without structures, rules and institutions.
Do these shifts need to be quantified, for it to be integrated into the digital infrastructure? How would you quantify such shifts? Would incentives by the government be needed to encourage citizens to participate what would they be? What is he referring to when he says a culturally sensitive approach need to be taken? How would that be possible? Would that mean a single model or approach cannot be applied and hence a new model is needed for every region?
Reframing, Reimagining and Remaking Smart Cities by Rob Kitchin
- “smart city advocates frame the city as a technical entity which consists of a set of knowable and manageable systems (or system of systems) that act in largely rational, mechanical, linear and hierarchical ways and can be steered and controlled through technical levers, and that urban issues can be solved with technical solutions6. Moreover, ‘the city’ is treated as a generic analytical category, meaning a solution developed for one city can be transferred and replicated elsewhere. Such a view of cities is limited and limiting; not only does this narrow, technical view fail to capture the full complexity of cities, but it also constrains the potential benefits that smart city technologies might produce by producing solutions that are not always attuned to the wider contexts in which urban problems are situated.”
By urban issues, is he referring to the digital and physical infrastructure? Cant they both be resolved by technical issues? By treating the city as a generic analytical category, is the socio-cultural aspects of a city taken into consideration? Can it be? Should smart city technologies produce solution that are applicable to a wider context?
- What is the best approach or solution for the problems mentioned? ( data is quantitative and one dimensional limited in scope) and ( scientific approach adopted for data generation, analysis and communication is reductionist…..in how it produces knowledge about cities.) ? What does he mean by other forms of knowing such as phronesis and metis? How would an epistemological approach help in reframing cities and there infrastructure? How would you quantify phronesis and metis?
- Would conceptual and philosophical approaches help in reframing and rethinking of cities but would how would you integrate these approaches into more practical methods?