From tar city to smart city living with the smart city ideology as a senior city dweller

Abstract

In smart cities, technologies are designed to assist people in their everyday lives, including intelligent homes, public transportation and e-services. How ever, these technologies can lead to new kinds of marginalisation for people who do not fit into the mold of a smart citizen . In this article, I explore how seniors experience everyday practices in the smart city of Oulu in northern Finland and how they perceive themselves as smart citizens. Through generat ing ethnographic composition of ICT-biographies, walk-Along interviews, and a series of participatory workshops; and thinking this process as collaborative knowledge making, the configuration of ageing in a smart city has emerged. In this configuration, the city is understood as an assemblage with distinct tem poral dynamics and interactions of structures, communities and individuals within a global power geometry. Seniors support the ideology of smart city as a regional strategy but they want to make a voluntary decision to become smart citizens. The current smart city is mainly made for and by technology savvy people, excluding other citizens. To become a truly smart community the city must include a variety of citizens in the making of the city, and many seniors are willing to take up this challenge.