Multi-stakeholder cooperation for safe and healthy urban environments: The case of citizen sensing

Abstract

Residents of the twenty-first century’s city are often confronted with challenges to their health and wellbeing deriving from, among others, environmental health risks. Urban actors tend to respond to risk through various innovative solutions when they are in a situation of stress or shock. An emerging practice, i.e. ‘Citizen Sensing’, shows that the citizens are increasingly both willing and capable of monitoring these risks themselves and push for a change in their governance. When non-expert citizens take advantage of technology to monitor environmental risk, two possible outcomes are conceivable. Either, the pre-existing institutional patterns for governing such risks are de-legitimized, or the two systems converge and strengthen each other. This chapter investigates two cases, the AiREAS air monitoring case (Eindhoven, the Netherlands), and the Safecast radiation monitoring case (Fukushima, Japan), the first standing as an example of multi-stakeholder cooperation involving citizens, public and private actors, the second illustrating a conflict between the citizens and the institutions. Factors particularly favorable for a successful program are: the existence of a real problem; the credibility of the Citizen Sensing initiative; its data quality and reliability; the commitment to a public good; public and media support; and-in certain instances-an initial distrustful attitude.