Cities around the world are implementing technology-based solutions to make better the high volumes of data collected but also need to design and implement strategies to engage with citizens. This study explores why and how cities engage citizens in their smart city initiatives by analyzing the results of a nationwide survey of US cities. Results show that cities view the purpose of citizen engagement as more informative or to generate support for smart city efforts. Cities appear to use a diverse combination of mechanisms to engage citizens with smart city initiatives with an emphasis on simple, one-way communications from government to citizens.
Cities around the world are implementing technology-based solutions to address a variety of
challenges, including those related to transportation, clean air and water, energy consumption, and
health. These technological "smart city" solutions rely on a significant volume of data, created or
collected by public institutions
Citizens are engaged in smart cities in any number of ways. They are engaged to the extent that
they are consumers of these services; for example, in Columbus, Ohio the public is informed about
the availability of new technologies like electric vehicles and how they can use these services. Also,
citizens and private, public, and non-profit organizations can passively receive the high volume of
data cities collect and make publicly available
The purpose of this study is to generally understand why and how cities engage citizens in smart city initiatives. To do this, a nationwide survey was conducted of smart city officials in the US to gather their perceptions of the purposes of citizen engagement and the mechanisms they use to engage citizens. Preliminary results show that cities view citizen engagement as a means to inform combination of participatory, consultative, and communicative mechanisms to engage citizens in smart initiatives.
Cities face an especially difficult task of building internal capacity for data-based decision-making. While a central role of data and analysis in smart cities is to improve quality of life, technological efforts can contribute to undermining the goal of equitable civic engagement unless there are strong and explicit efforts to correct for the inequitable capacity to make use of the data.
Citizens willingness and ability to be part of the process depends on multiple factors. Some of
these factors are related to the individuals' profile including educational level, digital literacy; as
well as the characteristics of the smart initiative itself
Even as citizens are continually improving their digital literacy, this improvement is not
homogeneous across the population. Moreover, the digital literacy and analytical skills of citizens
can determine their ability to understand the information they are receiving, and frame their
perceptions regarding the technology that cities are trying to implement, leading to fear, rejection
Whether it is citizens overall or particular subpopulations, citizens could develop negative
attitudes towards the use of the smart technologies, determining their frequency of use, their
perceived value added and their willingness to participate in and support smart city projects.
There may also be a deficit of technical skills within the city that make it difficult to generate and
implement innovation
Citizen engagement can take place in different stages of the innovation process and it can serve
multiple goals. Governments can decide to implement citizen engagement to meet legal
requirements, embody ideals of democratic participation and inclusion, diagnose a problem, design
a solution, co-produce a policy or program, generate support for an initiative, or create and sustain
social capital, among others
surveys, meetings, or simply providing information). The mechanisms that cities can use to engage citizens are multiple and scholars have debated the dimensions used to categorize these mechanisms. The operating assumption is that different kinds of mechanisms are useful for different purposes contingent on the ability of a city to use those mechanisms.
This study provides exploratory insights on smart city citizen engagement initiatives in cities across
the US. A descriptive empirical analysis is used to report results from a nationwide survey of city
officials in the US, and lays the groundwork for future additional analysis. The survey was sent to
the 1,000 most populated cities within the US, according to census data
The unit of analysis is the city. For all the citizen engagement questions, respondents were asked to refer to their largest smart city project. The largest smart city project was defined as the one with the biggest overall cost, including the total investment by all partners. The largest smart city project has the highest likelihood of showing the wide range of citizen engagement purposes and mechanisms that cities are implementing. The projects total cost range from a $12,000 to $1,000,000, with a mean of $30,799 and a standard deviation of $122,490. In average a 67.80% of that cost is public expenditure (sd. 59%). Most of the projects (63%) have been operating for less than 2 years, 24% from 3 to 5 years, and 13%for more than 6 years.
Nine items included as purposes were adapted form the list present in Bryson and Quick [4]. The
frequency of each purpose is presented item-by-item. The survey contained a list of 10 mechanisms
adapted from the inventory developed by
Seven combinations of mechanisms were created (communication only, consultation only, participation only, communication-consultation, communication-participation, consultationparticipation, and communication-consultation-participation). Each city was included in one of these combinations where it had one mechanism in one of the basic types of mechanisms
(communication, consultation, or participation). Thus, if a city had two communication mechanisms and one consultative mechanism, it was put in the communication-consultation combination. This section reports the frequencies of the purposes of citizen engagement and the mechanisms utilized. Figure 1 contains the percentage of cities that declared having each purpose as part of their plan to engage citizens in their largest smart city project. The most common purpose is to send information to residents (86%), followed by gaining citizen support (69%). The high prevalence of these purposes is consistent with the results shown in figure 2 for engagement mechanisms. Cities commonly used communication mechanisms (one-way from city to citizen) whose aim is to send information to citizens.
On the other extreme, the less frequently declared purpose is to meet legal requirements (22%). The small number of cities that declare having this as a purpose for the engagement of citizens is interesting. One potential explanation is that there are not clear or predetermined legal requirements on how and when to engage citizens in smart city initiatives since a large number of these cities are still in an early stage of implementation of these kinds of projects.
Figure 2 presents the percentage of cities that use each one of the mechanisms. The most used mechanisms to engage citizens are information publicly availably (64%) and meetings to provide information (56%). On the opposite side, the less used mechanisms are meetings to design a solution with citizens and meetings to make binding decisions (both 8%). The percentage of cities that implement each mechanism in their smart city initiatives seems to align with the level of intensity of the interaction that each one requires. The most commonly used are communication mechanisms, followed by consultation, while participation mechanisms are the less used. The most frequently used citizen engagement mechanisms are those that require less interaction. These include making information publicly available and meetings to provide information mechanisms that are intended to just send information to the community.
In contrast, the less frequently used mechanisms are those that require the most active interaction
D M bidirectional exchanges of information, but also involve expressing and forming opinions through deliberation. This intense level of interaction can slow projects down and may require particular skills or involve the expenditure of additional resources that the city does not have. One exception to this general finding of the relationship between intensity and use, are 'Meetings with experts' which are at a higher level of intensity but frequently used. Relying on experts may be efficient in that they provide useful information including what citizens want and guide governments toward
Another exception are 'Hotlines or 311' with a low intensity but not used frequently. This may owe less to being low intensity and easy to use but are simply less effective for smart city engagement.
Figure 3 reports how cities combine different type of mechanisms. Most of the cities use a combination of communication, consultation and participation mechanisms (45%). Using combinations of communication with consultation, and communication with participation are the second and third most popular cases (18 and 12% respectively). Only a minor percentage of cases concentrate their portfolio purely in one of the three types of engagement. How they determine and decide what the right combination of engagement mechanisms to achieve their purposes is, could be because of a) the synergies among specific set of mechanisms, b) a response to experiences engaging citizens in the past, or c) a random combination. This question cannot be responded with this data, but could be explored in future case study research.
Overall, the results indicate that cities perceive the purpose of citizen engagement as a way to generate support for smart city initiatives or to inform citizens. There is less emphasis on legal compliance or interactive design of projects. The low emphasis on legal compliance might mean that legal requirements are a floor for citizen engagement. Earlier it was suggested that one potential explanation for the low emphasis on legal requirements is that there are not clear or predetermined legal requirements on how and when to engage citizens in smart city initiatives since a large number of these cities are still in an early stage of implementation of these kinds of projects (reported in table 1). Alternatively, cities could have specific requirements to engage citizens in general, but since this represents a minimum requirement, it becomes a routine rather than fully capturing why they are doing citizen engagement. Put another way, there are much more important reasons for doing citizen engagement than simply meeting legal requirements.
The different purposes for doing citizen engagement, in some cases, might compete with each other; for example, . Yet the variety of purposes reported by cities might also mean that purposes can be harmonized. In any case, cities might consider giving citizens the opportunity to be heard early in the process as it might lead to better designed solutions. These tradeoffs or congruencies need to be explored creatively by smart city managers.
There may be many reasons why cities seem more reticent to use participation mechanisms. The implementation of more participative mechanisms can require a bigger investment in time and resources from the city, especially in the context of smart city projects, where other survey results indicated that the financial resources seem to be unstable and unpredictable. Moreover, processes that include deliberation increase challenges like lack of interest or capacity to understand and process information, which could make them less likely to participate. Finally, since these process involve deliberation, planning and implementing them effectively could be more difficult than with simpler mechanisms without so many interests at stake.
While the results of this survey show that cities use a variety of mechanisms to engage citizens in smart city projects which is a good thing the most commonly used tools are the simpler one-way communication mechanisms. The more intense forms of engagement, such as participatory or consultative are less commonly employed. The presumption is that cities should be matching mechanisms to the kinds of purposes that they are seeking to realize. If smart city purposes are complex, while the mechanisms chosen are simple and easier, there could actually be a mismatch between the goals and the means used to achieve them.. The use of simple mechanisms could be a result of a lack of skills, resources, or understanding of the benefits of robust citizen engagement. Given that a variety of different kinds of mechanisms is preferable, it may be important to identify best practices and understand what experience among many cities has actually shown. This would include knowing what the real costs and risks are, followed by training.
This study is the first step in a larger research project on smart city initiatives. Next steps include comparing administrator and citizen perceptions of barriers to citizen engagement and what constitutes successful citizen engagement. There are interesting dynamics and relationships that should be explored in more detail. Most important for practice is to understand how administrators create pragmatic solutions given the competing purposes and constraints. In depth case studies are another next logical step to build upon the results described here.
Thompson, E. M. (2016) 358-371.
International Journal of Architectural Computing, 14(4),
Angie Westover-Muñoz David Landsbergen Angie Westover-Muñoz is a Ph.D. Student in Public Policy and Management at John Glenn College of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University. Her research interests include technology and data-driven policies, and citizen engagement.
David Landsbergen is an associate professor at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University. He has written about modernizing information systems, interoperability, privacy, developing technical standards, public records, and open data in Government Information Quarterly, IEEE Transactions, the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration Review, and the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.
Amanda M. Girth