Toward a Smart Urban Planning. The Co-production of Contemporary Citizenship in the Era of Digitalization

Abstract

This paper investigates mediated negotiations in ‘smart city’ experimentalism. As often claimed, data can open pathways for innovative planning processes. However, the idea of planning underpinned by the interplay between citizens and data too often remains unquestioned. How might we move the idea of planning from data to provide (technical solutions) to data to transform (urban societal realities)? How can data empower citizens as true drivers of a transformative urban change? This paper argues for a planning perspective to enhance a new sense of citizenship in a future technology-driven urban democracy. The framework combines planning theory with theories of societal change under a critical pragmatism. The empirical research derives from Mobility Urban Values (MUV2020), a Horizon 2020 innovation and research project (2017–2020), with the ambition to change mobility endeavors toward a more participatory and sustainable urban policy. The paper synthesizes analysis of the ‘practice stories’ of professionals dealing with and facilitating the interplay between data and citizens in six European cities. It then discusses MUV’s deliberative planning process in which citizens generate data (co-creation of values), interpret data (co-design of facts) and perform utterances to call for new urban policy (co-production of actions). The conclusions draw a possible pathway to enhance smart urban planning as a perspective to empower citizens with data for a progressive democracy in the era of digitalization. Change-oriented practitioners can potentially facilitate smart urban planning through: 1) technological devices that engage individual citizens (choices) with data practices in everyday life; 2) frames for the interpretation of data with citizens’ and communities (practice) and 3) public conversations between citizens with other publics (system) for new street-level practices of urban democracy.