A smart city is a phenomenon where municipalities engage with stakeholders to use ICT for increasing efficiency, sustainability, and quality of life for its citizens and city operations. However, smart city initiatives can at times challenge human rights. While particular human rights such as privacy have been subject to analysis in the digital government field, a complete view on human rights in smart cities has so far been missing in our discipline. It is mainly studies from other disciplines that voice comprehensive concerns about potentially negative impacts of smart cities on human rights. However, they often lack the technological background. This paper reports on a pilot study as an initial exploration of the phenomenon in the digital government field. In our research, we studied both the positive and negative effects of smart cities on human rights by conducting qualitative interviews with citizens and municipal employees with central roles in smart city initiatives. Our results suggest that in addition to privacy and security, the human rights of freedom of expression, adequate standard of living, and equal access to public services are likely to be affected by smart city initiatives.
Acknowledgement: We would like to thank June Lithell Hansen and Andreas Skaiaa for the data collection.
Smart city is a concept that relates to addressing urgent urban problems by using new technologies.
Around 5 billion people are estimated to live in urban areas by the year 2030
However, the quest for the mentioned benefits can also lead to potential negative effects of smart
cities and threaten human rights. Human rights represent rights that are "inherent to all human
beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status" (United
Nations, n.d.) such as the right to life and liberty, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to
work and education, and the right to privacy. For example, some of the data gathered in a smart city
context consist of sensitive and personal information such as current location information, habits
and personal preferences. This allows the owner of the data to create rich and in part personally
identifiable knowledge about consumers, patients, clients, customers and products
While particular human rights such as privacy have been subject to analysis in the digital
government field, a complete view on human rights in smart cities has so far been missing in our
discipline. It is mainly studies from disciplines such as political science, urban development, and
sociology that voice comprehensive concerns about potentially negative impacts of smart cities on
human rights
Therefore, our aim in this study is to explore if, or how, smart city initiatives can impact the human rights of the citizens that live in a smart city. This work in progress paper summarizes the results of a pre-study that was guided by the research question: How can smart city initiatives affect human rights?
In order to get an initial understanding of the phenomenon, we conducted qualitative interviews with four experts working on smart city initiatives as well as ten citizens in a Norwegian city. Our results suggest that smart city initiatives can have a significant impact - both positively and negatively - on human rights. These findings will serve as the basis for a more in-depth analysis of this relationship. Further, our findings can serve to sensitize scholars from both the digital government and the information systems disciplines in their further endeavors.
2.1.
The smart city phenomenon emerged in the late 1990s and has gained substantial attention after the
turn of the century both among practitioners and researcher
Although several technologies are necessary in smart city development, it is generally agreed that
smart city development is highly data driven. Phenomena like IoT (Internet of Things), Big data and
Data analytics are often seen as key technological enablers of development
Both practical development of smart cities and most of the research literature in the Information Systems domain seem to assume a techno-optimist stance, meaning that smart city development is considered more or less exclusively positive. Definitions and conceptualization such as the model as infrastructure and services become increasingly data driven, the potential for harmful consequences such as negative influence on human rights increase. 2.2.
Human rights refer to univeral and inalienable rights of every human being. They have been institutionalised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly after the second world war in 1948 (United Nations, n.d.). Todate, almost 150 countries in the world have acknowledge the declaration.
Human rights have played a special role in urban areas beyond the realm of the smart city context.
This becomes manifest in the two narratives that particularly link the concepts of human rights and
cities: the rights in the city and the right to the city
With the ubiquitous implementation of ICT in smart cities, new opportunities to enhance human
rights arise. Technology such as mobile applications could, for example, facilitate the inclusion of
marginalized groups such as disabled people
However, the increased use of ICT brings several threats to human rights. As seen from a
technical perspective, the individual's right to privacy is severely affected. IoT applications
massively collect data such as the identity of the user, position or personal communication, which
if being transferred without consensus - violate the human right of privacy (Berrehili & Belmekki,
2017). It is further criticized that rather than including marginalized groups of people such as
disabled or elderly citizens, technological solutions even further exclude these stakeholders, thus
depriving them of their right to the city. To take advantage of smart city services, citizens need to
adapt to the technological procedures but not everyone is able to do so. In the research domains of
human rights, urban planning, politics, and sociology, smart cities are recurrently criticized for
prioritizing the needs of wealthy and well-educated citizens while neglecting the less privileged
ones
Rather than grounding on political, social and civil rights and the common good, smart city
solutions are criticized for being most often market-led (Cardullo & Kitchin, 2019). Another driver
are cities and governments aiming to use the label of a themselves
and display their modernity
From a digital government and information systems perspective, the tensions between human rights and the opportunities offered by technology in smart cities has not been discussed comprehensively. Therefore, the goal of our research is to move beyond the techno-optimist stance and to shed light on the relationship between smart city initiatives and human rights also in our discipline.
This study is considered a pilot to explore if, and eventually how, smart city initiatives can influence
human rights. Given the exploratory nature of the research, we adopted a qualitative research
approach
Kristiansand is a city and municipality in the southern part of Norway. In January 2020, Kristiansand merged with two neighboring municipalities as part of a larger, national process to reduce the number of municipalities in Norway. Kristiansand is currently Norway´s fifth largest city with about 112,000 citizens. Kristiansand has prioritized digitalization for years and the merger created new opportunities in this area. The city is currently experimenting with smart city initiatives to better understand how technology can contribute to improved city life and better citizen dialogue. Up to now, however, no comprehensive smart city strategy exists.
The interviews with city officials revealed that the city has 8 ongoing smart city projects. They emphasized different motivation factors for why the city engaged in smart city initiatives, including improved service quality, citizen centric development, environmentally sustainable city development and improved citizen dialogue. This input was used to develop a thorough understanding of the type of smart city initiatives Kristiansand was working on. This understanding was later communicated to citizens as we invited them to reflect on positive and negative consequences related to human rights. Our findings corroborated existing literature in that smart city initiatives can have both negative and positive impact on the right to privacy, security and freedom of expression. Further, our findings indicate that such initiatives may also affect the right to adequate standard of living, equal access to public service and the right to be innocent until proven guilty. An overview of smart city initiatives and their potential impact on human rights is showed in Table 1 below. Smart City Initiative Description Impact on Human Rights GPS tracking Municipality provides an online map Negative impact on security for snowplow and with the location of snowplows and snowplow drivers. sweeper truck sweeper truck to inform where the truck Positive impact on quality of has removed the snow or pebbles. service for citizens.
GPS tracking city Work in progress. The initiative enables Negative impact on privacy. bikes citizens to rent a GPS tracked e-bicycle Positive impact on quality of in the city to use whenever they like to. service.
Crisis management SMS service to inform citizens about Positive impact on security. GPS tracking emergencies, such as floods, power Potentially negative impact on outages, wildfires and terror. privacy.
Measure air quality Real time air quality measures using Negative impact on privacy. small sensors to provide a better Positive on quality of service and overview for citizens and professionals standard of living but only for of the actual air quality. some. May increase inequality.
SMELT Heated cables in the ground of Positive on quality of service and pedestrian areas linked to the weather standard of living but only for forecast site Yr to be turned on when the some. May increase inequality. weather dictates it.
Collecting citizens' opinions concerning on
thoughts on a case within in the city, ask questions, share pictures etc..
Municipality uses social media to mobilize young people with minority backgrounds to participate in debates. The harbor in Kristiansand undergoes many changes to reduce noise, automate and use electricity gathered from renewable energy resources.
freedom of expression.
Potentially negative on privacy. Positive impact on quality of service and standard of living for those affected.
Our results sugget that every smart city initiative may affect human rights, either positively,
negatively or both. The most frequently affected rights are privacy and security, which is in line with
findings from the literature
Since our sample in the study is quite small and we did not consider smart cities as a holistic concept but only shed lights on single smart city initiatives, the results cannot be generalized. However, our findings already provide evidence for human rights violations. Our pilot study provides examples how smart city development can affect human rights both positively and negatively, but more in-depth studies are certainly needed to fully understand these consequences. Although some attention has been paid to this issue by scholars from other disciplines, our preliminary findings suggest that the issue deserves a more prominent place in the digital government field.
A variety of angles can be considered in the pursuit of a better understanding of how smart city development can affect human rights. However, as cities are for citizens, a stakeholder approach might be appropriate. Studies identifying the different interests that motivate development may be contrasted with studies analyzing the broad impact on different stakeholder groups in the city. This is likely to uncover conflicts of interest and potentially dysfunctional or unintended consequences. Further, studies from techno-optimist perspectives may be contrasted with critical studies highlighting with potentially damaging outcomes to the future development of urban societies. Anthopoulos, L. G. (2017). Understanding Smart Cities: A Tool for Smart Government or an Industrial Trick?
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Berrehili, F. Z., & Belmekki, A. (2017). Privacy Preservation in the Internet of Things. Advances in
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citizen participation in Dublin, Ireland. GeoJournal, 84(1), 1 13.
Marsal-Llacuna, M.-L. (2017). Building Universal Socio-cultural Indicators for Standardizing the 579.
Leif Skiftenes Flak Leif Skiftenes Flak is professor in Information systems and director of CeDiT Centre for Digital Transformation at the University of Agder. Flak has close to 20 years of experience with research on digitalization in the public sector. He has extensive national and international project experience and has served on a variety of reference groups and expert committees in organisations such as the Norwegian Health Directorate, the Norwegian Auditor General and the Norwegian Agency for Public and Financial Management. Flak is an active member of the international academic communities related to digital government and information systems.
Sara Hofmann