Designing Community Technology Initiatives: A Literature Review

Abstract

Citizens and communities play a signifcant role in shaping the cities they live in, providing a human touch to the development of smart cities. Designers and researchers aim to support this movement through developing (partly) digital technologies together with citizens and communities. However, while the body of examples on this topic is steadily growing, less efort has been made to aggregate existing research and map the underlying processes. In order to contribute to a better understanding of community technology initiatives, this article presents a qualitative systematic literature review on the design and deployment of (partly) digital technologies for civic communities. The article outlines fve important topics in these community technology initiatives, based on a qualitative analysis of fndings from 36 empirical studies. The fve topics are: connectedness to the community context, establish(ed) networks and relationships, balanced roles and responsibilities, diverse and inclusive involvement, and collaborative development of community technologies. The article provides a starting point for future research and design of community technology initiatives and ofers an introduction for researchers new to the feld.

When Reality Kicks In: Exploring the Influence of Local Context on Community-Based Design

“…Balestrini et al [48], for instance, describe how sharing memories about local heritage sights fostered a feeling of pride amongst the participants and subsequently led to more sustained engagement in the participatory process. As such, connection to the local physical environment can be a relevant strategy to leverage community engagement and contribute to more sustainable outcomes [23].…”

“…Design for social sustainability is, essentially, a contextual and participatory practice [20], requiring the engagement of local communities and a place-based approach to create social connections and locally embedded solutions [21][22][23]. In order to create local social change and to empower communities through design, design researchers are urged to look beyond the creation of technological interventions towards "successful establishment of its usage in a practice context" (p. 114 [24]).…”

Augmenting Community Engagement in City 4.0: Considerations for Digital Agency in Urban Public Space

“…Participatory and collaborative approaches particularly look at broadening the base of stakeholders involved, and especially at 'giving a voice' to traditionally marginalized groups [9,10]. The community engagement literature has seen a few interesting new developments in participatory design methodologies [11], interventions within public space [9,12], or applications of novel technologies [4] that address the challenge of inclusion. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of QR codes and remote communication, whilst Facebook's announcement of their 'metaverse' plan brings concepts of mixed reality and blockchain to the mainstream, offering new opportunities for technologically mediated interactions in community engagement processes.…”