The Next Generation of Smart Citizens: Experiences and Inspiration from the +Cityxchange Project

Fostering Smart Citizens: The Role of Public Libraries in Smart City Development

“…One more significant publication based on a series of essays by thought leaders posits that smart citizens are individuals who take responsibility for their community and use technology to participate in public affairs and collectively create better solutions to urban problems [118]. Such participation and agency are often realized through new ways of connecting, interacting, and learning with other stakeholders to prioritize, design, and implement smart city initiatives, ensuring their value for money, effectiveness, and wide adoption [7,10,40,63,74,[115][116][117] as well as the co-creation of socially oriented innovations [20,[67][68][69][118][119][120]. This co-creation includes innovations conceived, tested, or fabricated by smart citizens using various ad-vanced tools and resources, often in dedicated experimental spaces such as makerspaces, fablabs, or living labs [20,40,44,49,70,74,121,122].…”

“…Such interventions can enhance smart citizens' socio-technical competencies [153], reveal the needs of different social groups [81], and address concerns such as those related to privacy and security of data collection, sharing, and usage in smart cities [21]. Moreover, universities and schools can help prepare not only the current but also the next generation of smart citizens by offering educational courses, programs, and sessions for different age groups that impart knowledge about technology, public affairs, and the environment (natural and built) in addition to developing digital skills and connections necessary for present and future participation in making their cities smart [17,81,117]. Regarding the youth, schools are advised to take new, carefully planned approaches, such as using serious game elements and mechanics in urban innovation tasks, which are part of smart city development processes [154,155].…”

“…For example, universities can mediate and design workshops and consultative or co-creation engagements. In such engagements, citizens, alongside other stakeholders, can not only learn and discuss smart city plans and initiatives but also experience and experiment with smart city solutions to become active, informed contributors to smart city development [41,43,49,76,116,117,142]. Some government-backed research institutes, such as the European Research Council, can be influential in promoting multistakeholder approaches to developing smart cities and citizen-centric processes in urban innovation projects, interventions, and experiments [38].…”

“…Multiple actors have been encouraging citizens to be democratic participants in smart cities, contributing to their development as smart citizens. To make cities smart, governments initially engaged citizens in an ex post consultative manner to better understand diverse needs and preferences and align planned smart city initiatives with these insights to enhance implementation [19,25,80,117,130,141]. With changing citizens' expectations, public management realities, and technology, resource-strapped governments are reaching out ex ante to tap into citizens' ideas and expertise to maximize technology's value and collaboratively improve the quality of life in cities [20,39,118,121,140].…”

“…With changing citizens' expectations, public management realities, and technology, resource-strapped governments are reaching out ex ante to tap into citizens' ideas and expertise to maximize technology's value and collaboratively improve the quality of life in cities [20,39,118,121,140]. Some governments have legislated policies or adopted strategies to mandate smart citizens' active participation in such collaborations [89,117]. For example, the United Kingdom has adopted eight 'citizen-centric' smart city national standards, which explicitly refer to the active participation of smart citizens in decision-making processes [36].…”