Participatory smart cities promote urban development and transformation by involving citizens and communities in participation and co-production exercises. However, to take advantage of the citizens’ contribution to the success of smart city initiatives, interaction-defined and participation-based governance infrastructures should be implemented that return power to the people. An exploratory study shows that how the smart city collaborative/participatory governance questions the traditional power relationships between city governments and citizens is a still underexplored topic. The paper aims to help bridge this theoretical gap by discussing citizens’ co-production in smart city initiatives from the point of view of the power relationships. The main point of the paper is that to leverage the citizens’ smartness to develop a smart city, the power relationships between the city government and the citizens should be rebalanced, which entails a shift from a power-over domination-based logic to a power-with interactive and collaboration-based logic.

Power Relationships in the Co-production of Smart City Initiatives

Walter Castelnovo;
2021-01-01

Abstract

Participatory smart cities promote urban development and transformation by involving citizens and communities in participation and co-production exercises. However, to take advantage of the citizens’ contribution to the success of smart city initiatives, interaction-defined and participation-based governance infrastructures should be implemented that return power to the people. An exploratory study shows that how the smart city collaborative/participatory governance questions the traditional power relationships between city governments and citizens is a still underexplored topic. The paper aims to help bridge this theoretical gap by discussing citizens’ co-production in smart city initiatives from the point of view of the power relationships. The main point of the paper is that to leverage the citizens’ smartness to develop a smart city, the power relationships between the city government and the citizens should be rebalanced, which entails a shift from a power-over domination-based logic to a power-with interactive and collaboration-based logic.
2021
Springer
978-3-030-47538-3
File in questo prodotto:
Non ci sono file associati a questo prodotto.

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11383/2113025
 Attenzione

L'Ateneo sottopone a validazione solo i file PDF allegati

Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus 1
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? ND
social impact