From Aspiration to Reality: Open Smart Cities

Centre for Ethics
Ethics in the City Lecture Series
From Aspiration to Reality: Open Smart Cities
January 16, 2018
16:00 PM - 18:00 PM
University of Toronto
Rm 200, Larkin Building
Dr. Tracey P. Lauriault
Assistant Professor of Critical Media and Big Data
Communication and Media Studies,
School of Journalism and Communication
Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Tracey.Lauriault@Carleton.ca
ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1847-2738

Seminar
1. Technological Citizenship
2. Openness
3. Critical Data Studies
4. Theoretical framework
• Assemblage
• Social-Shaping
5. Open Smart Cities
• Open Smart Cities Project
• Smart City Context in Canada
• Research & Methodology
• Case Studies
• Observations
• Open Smart City Guide
6. Open Smart City Readiness
7. Q&A

1.1 Technological Citizenship
• We live in a technological society
• Decisions about technology are political
• We should not leave all technological decisions to the
technocrats
• 3 preconditions for technological citizenship
• Agency
• Capacity to act – power
• Knowledge
• Those who possess those preconditions have the
responsibility to act and intervene in the technological
society Andrew Feenberg, 2011
https://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/copen5-1.pdf

1.2 Data Colonialism,
• Data colonialism
• Dispossession of personal & individual data (EULA)
• Privatization of those data (by those who create the platform/app)
• Commodification of those data (resale of those data)
• Data are also colonizing lifeworlds
• Frontier mentality
• Utopic digital/data frontier
• Manifest destiny of big data systems
Thatcher, O’Sullivan & Mahmoudi, 2016
https://doi-org.proxy.library.carleton.ca/10.1177/0263775816633195

1.3 Doing Citizenship in a Technological Society
• Technology
• assemble to form the setting where citizenship unfolds
• is part of what constitutes a good life which makes it part of politics
• and technological decisions bring forward moral and ethical issues
• Technology and citizenship are related in 3 ways:
1. Technology as a means for citizenship
2. Technology as an object
3. Technology as a setting for political judgement
• Technology ought to be politicized and technological
fundamentalism ought to be scrutinized while questions of what
is just and good should be asked.
Darin Barney, 2007
http://darinbarneyresearch.mcgill.ca/Work/One_Nation_Under_Google.pdf

2.1 Openness
Open Access
Open Source
Open Data
Open Science
Open Firmware
Open Platforms
Open AI
Open Specifications
Open Standards
Open Government
Open Smart Cities

2.2 Data Communities of Practice
Research/scientific
Data
GovData
GeoData
Physical
Sciences
AdminData
Public Sector Data
NGOs
Access to Data Open Data
Social
Sciences
2005
Operations Data
Infrastructural Data
Sensor Data
Social Media Data
AI/Machine Learning Data
Smart Open Data?
2015
Private Sector
IOT
- Smart Cities
- Precision Agriculture
- Autonomous Cars
SM Platforms
Algorithms
P2P – Sharing Economy
Predictive Policing
Surveillance
Digital Labour
Drones
5GPublic/Private Sector Data?
Crowdsourcing
Citizen Science
Civic Teck
OCAP
Local and
Traditional
Knowledge

Research and thinking that applies critical social theory to data & technology to
explore the ways in which:
Data are more than the unique arrangement of objective and
politically neutral facts
&
Understands that data do not exist independently of ideas,
techniques, technologies, systems, people and contexts
regardless of them being presented in that way
3.2 Data – big or small
Tracey P. Lauriault, 2012, Data, Infrastructures and Geographical Imaginations. Ph.D. Thesis,
Carleton University, Ottawa, http://curve.carleton.ca/theses/27431

3.3 Framing Data
1. Technically
2. Ethically
3. Politically & economically
4. Spatial/Temporal
5. Philosophically
6. Technological Citizenship
7. Data Activism
Rob Kitchin, 2014, The Data Revolution, Sage.
Tracey P. Lauriault, engaged research

3.4 Critical Data Studies Vision
• Unpack the complex assemblages that produce, circulate,
share/sell and utilise data in diverse ways;
• Chart the diverse work they do and their consequences for
how the world is known, governed and lived-in;
• Survey the wider landscape of data assemblages and how they
interact to form intersecting data products, services and
markets and shape policy and regulation.
Toward Critical Data Studies: Charting and Unpacking Data Assemblages and Their Work
By Rob Kitchin and Tracey P. Lauriault in Thinking Big Data in Geography New Regimes,
(Eds) Jim Thatcher, Josef Eckert, and Andrew Shears (2018)

4.1 Socio-Technological Assemblage
Material Platform
(infrastructure – hardware)
Code Platform
(operating system)
Code/algorithms
(software)
Data(base)
Interface
Reception/Operation
(user/usage)
Systems of thought
Forms of knowledge
Finance
Political economies
Governmentalities - legalities
Organisations and institutions
Subjectivities and communities
Marketplace
System/process
performs a task
Context
frames the system/task
Digital socio-technical assemblage
HCI, Remediation studies
Critical code studies
Software studies
New media studies
Game studies
Critical Social Science
Science Technology Studies
Platform studies
Places
Practices
Flowline/Lifecycle
Surveillance Studies
Critical data studies
Algorithm Studies
Modified by Lauriault from Kitchin, 2014, The Data Revolution, Sage.

4.2 Social-shaping qualities of data
Kitchin, 2012, Programmable City, http://progcity.maynoothuniversity.ie/about/

5.1.1 Open Smart Cities in Canada Project
Funded by: GeoConnections
Lead by: OpenNorth
Project core team:
• Rachel Bloom & Jean-Noe Landry, Open
North
• Dr. Tracey P. Lauriault, Carleton University
• David Fewer, LL.M., Canadian Internet
Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC)
• Dr. Mark Fox, University of Toronto
• Research Assistants Carleton University
• Carly Livingstone
• Stephen Letts
Project collaborators:
• Expert Smart City representatives
from the cities of:
1. Edmonton
2. Guelph
3. Montréal
4. Ottawa
• Collaborators include experts from
the provinces of:
1. Ontario
2. British Columbia
Lauriault, T. P. , Bloom, R. Landry, J.-N. 2018, Open Smart Cities Project https://www.opennorth.ca/open-smart-cities-guide

5.1.2 Project Outputs
1. Executive summary of a smart city environmental scan
(E-Scan) and 5 Canadian case studies.
• This report identifies international shapers of smart cities and
their components and describes current smart city practices
across Canada.
2. Assessment of Canadian smart city practices
• In depth city profiles were developed as a result of interviews
with smart city representatives from the cities of Edmonton,
Guelph, Montreal, and Ottawa..
3. Review of selected open smart city best practices in 4
international cities (Chicago, Dublin, Helsinki, and New
York)
• The literature review focuses on approaches to open and
geospatial data standardization in a smart city context. These
cities were chosen for their innovative geospatial and open data
policies and practices.
4. Inter-jurisdictional case study
• To situate open smart city policies and data management
practices in Canada’s inter-jurisdictional context, interviews
with officials from the Province of Ontario and consulted with
officials at the Province of British Columbia.
5. Open Smart Cities FAQ
• In collaboration with the Open Smart Cities in Canada core
team, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic
(CIPPIC) has created a FAQ to answer common legal and
regulatory questions about smart city technologies.
6. Open Smart Cities Guide V1.0
• This final phase of the project provides a definition for an Open
Smart City. This output intends to guide Canadian municipalities
toward co-creating Open Smart Cities with their stakeholders and
residents. Results will be disseminated broadly and were presented
during the project’s third webinar on April 17. Watch the
presentation here.

5.2.1 Smart City Challenge
• Launched November 2017, 225
Submissions, 130 Eligible, 20 shortlisted
• Municipalities, regional governments, &
Indigenous communities
• Community not-for-profit, private sector
company, or expert
• $300 million Smart Cities Challenge in
2017 Budget
22

5.2.2 Canada Smart City Challenge
http://www.infrastructure.gc.ca/sc-vi/map-applications.php
https://impact.canada.ca/en/challenges/smart-cities/results

5.2.3 Sidewalk Toronto the PPP Smart City
https://sidewalktoronto.ca/

5.3 Open Smart Cities
Research Methodology

5.3.1 Data collection & Methodology
• E-Scan of 4 cities + 1 Province
1. Edmonton
2. Guelph
3. Ottawa
4. Montreal
5. Ontario Smart Grid
• Development of semi-structured
interview instrument
• City officials generously
participated in 90 min phone
interviews
• Interviews were recorded &
transcribed
• City officials responded to
follow-up questions & validated
reports
The following was collected:
• visions and strategies
• reasons for deploying smart city
initiatives
• beneficiaries
• governance models
• deployment strategies
• citizen engagement
• “openness” and open data
• access to smart city data
• smart city business models
• procurement
• challenges & benefits.

5.3.2 Smart City Actors
• Vendors
• Think tanks
• Consulting firms
• Alliances and associations
• Standards organizations
• Civil society
• Academic
• Procurement
• Guides, Playbooks, Practices
• Indicators
• Cities

5.4 4 Canadian Cities, 1 Province,
International Best Practices

5.4.1 Edmonton - Smart City Initiative
The smart city is “about
creating and nurturing a
resilient, livable, and
workable city through
the use of technology,
data and social
innovation”

5.4.2 Guelph - Initiative
“The vision of a modern City is one that
offers services to customers when and where
they want them. A Smart City is one that
uses technology to achieve this goal, using
technology at every appropriate opportunity
to streamline processes and simplify access
to city services. This is a city that has all the
information it needs, available and
accessible, to support effective decision-
making”

5.4.3 Ottawa - Initiative
Connected City
• Create a city where all residents and busi-nesses
are connected in an efficient, affordable, and
ubiquitous way.
Smart Economy
• Stimulate economic growth by supporting
knowledge-based business expansion and
attraction, local entre-preneurs, and smart talent
development.
Innovative Government
• Develop new and innovative ways to impact the
lives of residents and businesses through the
creative use of new service delivery models,
technology solutions, and partnerships.

5.4.4 Montréal – Ville Intelligente, Strategy
& Action Plan
“A smart and digital city means
better services for citizens, a
universally higher standard of
living and harnessing of our
metropolis’s resources to ensure
its development is in line with
the population’s needs”
Vice Chair of the Executive Committee,
responsible for the smart city, Harout
Chitilian

5.4.5 Ontario Smart Grid
The Electricity Act, 1998242 defines a Smart Grid as follows:
• (1.3) For the purposes of this Act, the smart grid means the
advanced information exchange systems and equipment that
when utilized together improve the flexibility, security,
reliability, efficiency and safety of the integrated power
system and distribution systems, particularly for the
purposes of
• (a) enabling the increased use of renewable energy sources and technology,
including generation facilities connected to the distribution system;
• (b) expanding opportunities to provide demand response, price information
and load control to electricity customers;
• (c) accommodating the use of emerging, innovative and energy saving
technologies and system control applications; or
• (d) supporting other objectives that may be prescribed by regulation. 2009, c.
12, Sched. B, s. 1 (5).

5.4.6 International Best Practices
• Chicago
• Helsinki
• New York
• Barcelona
• Dublin
Open smart cities include:
• Rights (GDPR & right to repair)
• Are in the public interest
• Ethics (Quebec, NyC, Helsinki,
Chicago)
• Environmental considerations
• Critical and meaningful public
engagement & dialogue not just
consultation
• Ecosystems approach (ASDI and
Dublin Report)

Digital
Strategies
Open
Data
Open
Science
Open
Platform
Open Source
Open
Government
5.5.1 Smart Cities - Openness
YesNo MaybeUnlikely
Smart Cities/
Precision Ag/
IoT
Likely

Mapping
openness onto
the smart city
requires the
Integration of
digital
practices Alllevelsofgovernment
5.5.2 Smart Cities – Openness

5.5.3 What did we learn
• Smart cities are new & emerging & citizens do not generally know what
is coming, may not be the drivers
• Need to identify issues to be resolved with technology instead of
technology looking for issues
• More data does not mean better governance
• Very few overarching socio-technical and ethical considerations
• Requirement for technological citizenship
• Is this an innovation bias or is it a smart city that is best for the City, the
environment and its residents?

5.5.4 Smart City Challenges
• Data governance – residency, privacy, etc.
• Security & privacy vulnerabilities (hacking)
• E-waste – cost, short shelf life
• Mission creep - potential
• Surveillance / dataveillance potential
• Ownership / procurement
• Repair – DRM
• Device lock in
• Archiving - the lack thereof
• Reuse – unintended purposes
• Sustainability, maintenance & management
• Interoperability
• Standards – emerging

5.6 Open Smart City Guide V 1.0

A city is
• a complex and dynamic socio-biological system
• territorially bound
• a human settlement
• governed by public city officials who manage
• the grey, blue and green environment
• within their jurisdictional responsibility

A smart city is
• technologically instrumented & networked w/ systems that are
interlinked & integrated, where vast troves of big urban data are
being generated by sensors & administrative processes used to
manage & control urban life in real-time (Kitchin, 2018).
• where administrators and elected officials invest in smart city
technologies & data analytical systems to inform how to
innovatively, economically, efficiently & objectively run &
manage the city.
• The focus is most often to quantify & manage infrastructure,
mobility, business & online government services.
• a form of technological solutionism.

5.6.3 What is an open smart city?

Definition of the Open Smart City V 1.0
An Open Smart City is where residents, civil society, academics,
and the private sector collaborate with public officials to
mobilize data and technologies when warranted in an ethical,
accountable and transparent way to govern the city as a fair,
viable and liveable commons and balance economic
development, social progress and environmental responsibility.

5 Open Smart City Themes
1. Governance
2. Engagement
3. Data & Technology
4. Data Governance
5. Effective and values based smart cities

Theme 1. Governance in an Open Smart City is
ethical, accountable, and transparent. These
principles apply to the governance of social and
technical platforms which include data,
algorithms, skills, infrastructure, and knowledge.

Theme 1. Resources arranged as follows:
• Ethical Governance
• Governance Structures and Participation
• Cooperative and Multi-jurisdictional Governance
• Accountable Governance
• Transparent Governance
• Cooperative Governance

Theme 2. An Open Smart City is participatory,
collaborative, and responsive. It is a city where
government, civil society, the private sector, the
media, academia and residents meaningfully
participate in the governance of the city and have
shared rights and responsibilities. This entails a
culture of trust and critical thinking and fair, just,
inclusive, and informed approaches.

•Participatory
•Collaborative
•Responsive
•Trust
•Critical Thinking
•Fair & Just
•Inclusive & Informed

Theme 3. An Open Smart City uses data and
technologies that are fit for purpose, can be repaired
and queried, their source code are open, adhere to open
standards, are interoperable, durable, secure, and
where possible locally procured and scalable. Data and
technology are used and acquired in such a way as to
reduce harm and bias, increase sustainability and
enhance flexibility. An Open Smart City may defer when
warranted to automated decision making and therefore
designs these systems to be legible, responsive,
adaptive and accountable.

• Fit for Purpose
• Repaired and Queried
• Open Source
• Open Standards
• Cybersecurity and Data Security
• Reduction of Harm and Bias
• Local Procurement
• Balancing Sustainability

Theme 4. In an Open Smart City, data
management is the norm and custody and control
over data generated by smart technologies is held
and exercised in the public interest. Data
governance includes sovereignty, residency, open
by default, security, individual and social privacy,
and grants people authority over their personal
data.

• Data Management
• Custody of Data
• Residency
• Open by Default
• Security
• Privacy
• Personal Data Management

Theme 5. In an Open Smart City, it is recognized
that data and technology are not always the
solution to many of the systemic issues cities
face, nor are there always quick fixes. These
problems require innovative, sometimes long
term, social, organizational, economic, and
political processes and solutions.

Theme 5. Complex urban social issues need
more than technology for resolution:

6. Aspirations become reality!

6.1 Open Smart City Assessment
Open Smart
City
Principles
Open
Smart City
Definition
High Level
Strategy
Vision
Mission
RoadMap
Goals,
Objectives,
Initiatives
Tactical
Strategy
Implementation
Plan
Operational
Plan
Engagement
Environment
Transit /
transport
Energy
Economy
Innovation
Etc.
Liveable
Communities

6.2 Open Smart City work at Open North
• Part of a consortium, led by Evergreen’s Future Cities Canada
Program,
• to create the winning proposal to Infrastructure Canada’s Smart Cities Community
Support Program.
• OpenNorth is the lead technical partner in this partnership with Evergreen.
• 2019 kick off brings a new kind of organisational work on open smart cities.
• OpenNorth’s new One-to-One (1:1) Advisory Service
• will utilize applied research to provide standardized metrics and assessments to help
communities assess where they are in the process of becoming open and smart.
• Once completed, OpenNorth will offer tailored guidance on a community-by-
community basis focused on capacity building domains that cover:
• hardware,
• software,
• governance, and more,
• to assess impact

Project Outputs
• Open Smart Cities in Canada: Environmental-Scan and Case
Studies – Executive Summary
• (https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/e4fs8/ )
• Open Smart Cities in Canada: Assessment Report
• (https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/qbyzj/ )
• Open Smart Cities Legal FAQ
• (https://cippic.ca/en/Open_Smart_Cities )
• Webinars 1 & 2 & 3
• (http://bit.ly/2yp7H8k and https://vimeo.com/247378746 )
• Open Smart Cities Guide V1.0
• (http://www.opennorth.ca/open-smart-cities-guide )

Final Remarks
• The Open Smart City Guide V1.0 is a Living Document to be
updated on a regular basis and we are counting on you for your
help.
• http://www.opennorth.ca/open-smart-cities-guide
• Please send feedback, ideas, critiques etc. to
• info@opennorth.ca

Questions for you?
Ethical Framework for a city? Governance Structure?

Abstract
• From Aspiration to Reality: Open Smart Cities
• Open smart cities might become a reality for Canada. Globally there are a number of initiatives, programs, and practices that are open
smart city like which means that it is possible to have an open, responsive and engaged city that is both socio-technologically enabled,
but also one where there is receptivity to and a willingness to grow a critically informed type of technological citizenship (Feenberg).
For an open smart city to exist, public officials, the private sector, scholars, civil society and residents and citizens require a definition
and a guide to start the exercise of imagining what an open smart city might look like. There is much critical scholarship about the
smart city and there are many counter smart city narratives, but there are few depictions of what engagement, participatory design and
technological leadership might be. The few examples that do exist are project based and few are systemic. An open smart city
definition and guide was therefore created by a group of stakeholders in such a way that it can be used as the basis for the design of an
open smart city from the ground up, or to help actors shape or steer the course of emerging or ongoing data and networked urbanist
forms (Kitchin) of smart cities to lead them towards being open, engaged and receptive to technological citizenship.
• This talk will discuss some of the successes resulting from this Open Smart Cities work, which might also be called a form or engaged
scholarship. For example the language for the call for tender of the Infrastructure Canada Smart City Challenge was modified to include
as a requisite that engagement and openness be part of the submissions from communities. Also, those involved with the guide have
been writing policy articles that critique either AI or the smart city while also offering examples of what is possible. These articles are
being read by proponents of Sidewalk Labs in Toronto. Also, the global Open Data Conference held in Argentina in September of 2018
hosted a full workshop on Open Smart Cities and finally Open North is working toward developing key performance indicators to assess
those shortlisted by Infrastructure Canada and to help those communities develop an Open Smart Cities submission. The objective of the
talk is to demonstrate that it is actually possible to shift public policy on large infrastructure projects, at least, in the short term.

Acknowledgements
Open Smart City
Research was onducted in collaboration with Open North, and
funded by the GeoConnections Program, Natural Resources Canada
I would like to thank all those who participated in interviews.

From Aspiration to Reality: Open Smart Cities

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