CSOs Role in a Citizen-Centric Smart City Development. Insights from Warsaw

• In Event: Smart and civil? Civil Society role in the Context of Technological Smart City Developments

Abstract

The implementation of the smart city and the digitalization of the public re-define the citizens participation in the policy process and their right to the city (Lefebre 1968). The so-called citizen-centric approach, used as a driving concept for smart city policy design, treats citizens as co-creators of the service and puts emphasis on their needs and capabilities as a key factor for better suited solutions (Sepasgozar et al. 2019; Calzada et al., 2023; McBride et al., 2021).

However, in practice, citizen-centric rhetoric often strengthens the corporatization of the policy design process: it promotes a top-down approach, where the participation of citizens is highly structured and citizens are treated as “users” or “customers” of the city service (Kitchin et al., 2019), which leads to less meaningful and impactful citizen participation (Kempin Reuter, 2020). This reflects the neoliberal conception of citizenship, where the focus lies on the needs of the individuals while neglecting the importance of structural issues (Cardullo, Kitchin, 2019). The citizen-centric approach often defines participation as a process of service design, rather than solving social problems.

As the literature on smart city governance and digitalization of the public focus on the impact on the citizens, the CSOs role as brokers of citizen interests is still a black box. The CSOs role in the public policy design process is to facilitate democratic representation, as they represent excluded and ‘invisible’ citizens and re-define their problems as collective, public issues (Lang 2010). They also present and negotiate solutions, monitor public service and play the role of gatekeepers of the citizens rights. However, in the citizens-centric approach the role of the CSOs’ is unclear, as there are yet no clear guidelines in which stage of the policy design process they should be involved or excluded (goal formulation, service designed, implementation, evaluation etc.) nor what position should they have (active participants or consultation body, sponsors or beneficiaries etc).

In our presentation, we address these problems and focus on the role of CSOs in the process of smart city development, using the example of Warsaw, Poland. We observed the CSOs participation in the process of digital transformation of public services in Warsaw, a part of the Smart City Strategy established in 2020. Using qualitative methods (interviews, desk research and observation) we investigate how CSOs are involved in the smart city policy design process (monitor, control, evaluation and re-definition of Smart City strategy) and the service implementation (core smart city projects, i.e. digitalization of care services, digital public consultation, environmental policy ICT solutions). Our goal was to evaluate the position and influence of CSOs on the smart city policy and describe it within the matrix of the level of influence (city-strategy level, particular policy level, project level) and the role (consultation body, co-design role, beneficiary).


References:
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Authors

• Mateusz Trochymiak, University of Warsaw

• Anna Domaradzka, University of Warsaw