People-Centered Smart Cities Prioritize Humans Over Technology, Reveals Research
Empowering Westbury: Building a Human-Centered Smart City
Westbury, a historically marginalized working-class neighborhood in Johannesburg, South Africa, is paving the way for a new approach to smart city development. Instead of focusing on technological advancement, the community is envisioning tools that reflect their values and priorities, fostering a more inclusive, sustainable, and socially just urban environment.
At the heart of this transformation is the Participatory Futures method, which engages residents in shaping their community's future. Through workshops and collaborative mapping, Westbury's diverse population has identified safety, culture, and sustainability as key priorities for smart city technology.
Residents have emphasized the need for technology to support these values, rather than overriding them. This approach fosters a sense of ownership and empowers the community to drive technological change.
Solar panels, for instance, are not seen as a luxury but as essential infrastructure in Westbury. Solar hubs, imagined in the neighborhood, would power homes, schools, and local businesses during blackouts, addressing the inadequate energy infrastructure that plagues the area.
Residents also want locally controlled smart surveillance systems to help reduce crime, contributing to a safer environment. Smart tools in Westbury are also envisioned to showcase local art, amplify community voices, or support small businesses, promoting cultural expression and economic growth.
This participatory approach contrasts with top-down smart city initiatives that may overlook social context, often exacerbating inequality. By treating communities as co-creators, rather than passive recipients, the development of technology and services aligns with the local values, priorities, and everyday realities of residents.
This approach has far-reaching benefits. Grounding technology deployment in community-identified needs and aspirations fosters inclusivity. Co-creation builds local resilience by harnessing community strengths to address challenges like unemployment and violence. Enhancing fairness addresses spatial injustice and uneven access to services, ensuring that all residents benefit from smart city technology.
Building trust and social cohesion is crucial for resilient urban environments. Involving residents directly in decision-making processes fosters a sense of ownership and empowers communities to shape their own futures. This approach provides nuanced perspectives on technology’s role, ensuring it complements rather than disrupts community life.
This shift towards community-led smart city development is gaining ground in African cities. Initiatives like "Play Khayelitsha" in Cape Town and Medellín, Colombia, have demonstrated the power of participatory urban planning in creating more inclusive, sustainable, and grounded urban futures.
In Westbury, the research was conducted in collaboration with Terence Fenn from the University of Johannesburg. The findings underscore the importance of community input in building smart cities that are not only technologically advanced but deeply responsive to the people who live in them. Without community input, "smart" cities can ignore the very people they aim to help.
In essence, Westbury is demonstrating that a different approach to building smart cities is possible, starting with residents themselves. By prioritizing safety, culture, and sustainability, and by ensuring technology supports, rather than replaces, community values, Westbury is paving the way for human-centered smart cities that balance innovation with social justice.
References:
[1] Fenn, T., & Mills, N. (2018). Participatory Futures: A method for co-creating alternative urban futures. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 467-477. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174338
[3] Fenn, T., & Mills, N. (2019). Participatory Futures: A method for co-creating alternative urban futures. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1-13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3302518.3313351
- In the transformation of Westbury, technology is envisioned not just as an advancement, but as a tool that supports the community's priorities, such as home-and-garden essentials like solar power for homes and businesses during blackouts, contributing to a more sustainable lifestyle.
- Beyond crime reduction, smart tools in Westbury are imagined to promote local lifestyles, showcasing art, amplifying community voices, and supporting small businesses, fostering cultural expression and economic growth in the smart city.
