Lock-In, Locked Out: Visions of ‘The Public’ in Smart City Data Programs

• In Event: Smart yet (in)Sensible? Feminist Critical Perspectives on “Smart Cities” II

Abstract

Smart cities instrument urban space with sensors, making urban residents visible in new ways. Increasingly often, these sensor networks are collecting data via a cloud-based ‘software as a service’ business model, in which data becomes locked into vendor platforms and reliant on vendors to provide analytic tools. In this way, smart cities interpose new intermediaries between municipal governments and their residents, limiting the municipalities’ power to use the data they collect, or residents’ ability to access public data. This paper draws on 18 months of fieldwork with the City of Seattle and other local stakeholders. Drawing on critical theory, this paper interrogates vendor platform design, service agreements, law and policy to argue that smart city programs advance the interests of a particular vision of ‘the public’-- knowledge workers and enterprises. It argues that the data generated by smart city technologies, in their current instantiation, are less accessible and sensible to residents than that from the technologies and practices that preceded them. Based on empirical examples, it locates particular opportunities for more open, accessible, and thoughtful smart cities programs moving forward.

Author

• Meg Young