Smart Cities in the Making: Learning from Milton Keynes

在过去的十年里，我们看到了现在经常被称为“智慧城市”的广泛涌现。智慧城市通常被理解为使用数字技术产生的数据来增强其可持续性(通过鼓励更有效地利用资源)、经济增长(通过创新新产品和市场)和开放性(通过使更多的公民参与城市治理)。“智慧城市”是一种全球现象，是许多城市规划未来增长的核心，英国也不例外。超过一半的英国城市正在实施智能项目，政府的信息经济战略旨在通过到2020年占据全球智能城市市场10%的份额，使英国成为全球智能城市交付中心。政府直接资助了几个大型智能城市项目，赞助了三个与智能倡议直接相关的创新弹射器，英国标准研究所正在开发实施智能城市技术的框架。因此，智能对英国城市发展越来越重要。英国城市的智能技术形式多种多样，从智能电网到嵌入在建筑环境中的传感器和充电器，再到智能手机应用程序，再到在线开放数据仓库和仪表盘。然而，智能城市远远不止是它们的技术设备：智能城市还需要智能的城市政策制定、智能的产品、智能的公民，以及对智能是什么、应该是什么的愿景，所有这些东西都以各种方式汇聚和分化。目前，尽管当地社区和公民的参与被一再断言是成功的智能城市的先决条件，但对于智能政策和技术的开发和推出实际上如何吸引城市居民和工人，几乎一无所知。智能手机应用程序是为谁设计的，它们忽视了哪些社交需求？智能数据中心描述了什么类型的人群，因此使用此类数据的政策针对的是谁？事实上，记者、学者和城市活动人士表达了各种各样的担忧，例如，智能活动很可能无法惠及被社会边缘化的群体和个人，因此可能会加剧城市中数字富人和穷人之间的社会两极分化。这个项目抓住了在智能成熟的关键时刻回答这些问题的机会，并提供了一个真正的机会，来产生既能分析发展又能为发展提供信息的社会科学。通过对实际存在的智能城市--米尔顿·凯恩斯--进行详细的实证研究，该项目考察了智能政策、技术、产品、愿景和参与活动是如何想象特定类型的用户的。公民和消费者。因此，它将使MK的广泛的公共和私营部门当地利益相关者能够更好地了解他们的智能活动吸引了谁，如何参与以及为什么参与。这些发现将有助于确保智能城市活动对尽可能多的不同类型的人开放，并确保尽可能多的人参与到米尔顿·凯恩斯正在兴起的智能城市中。该项目是与英国智能城市场景中的一系列地方和国家利益相关者合作设计的，包括MK委员会、MK：SMART、交通系统弹射器以及社区行动MK，社区行动MK是城市中志愿和社区团体的伞形组织。这意味着，该项目的发现不仅将帮助MK成为一座包容社会的智能城市，而且该项目的发现将对英国乃至其他地区的智能城市产生影响。

The past decade has seen the widespread emergence of what are now often called 'smart cities'. Smart cities are generally understood to use the data produced by digital technologies to enhance their sustainability (by encouraging more efficient use of resources), economic growth (through innovating new products and markets) and openness (by enabling greater citizen participation in city governance). 'Smart cities' are a global phenomenon at the heart of how many cities are planning for future growth, and the UK is no exception. Over half of UK cities are implementing smart projects, and the government's Information Economy Strategy aims to make the UK a global hub of smart city delivery by capturing 10 per cent of the global smart city market by 2020. The government directly funds several large smart city projects, sponsors three innovation Catapults with direct links to smart initiatives, and the British Standards Institute is developing a framework for implementing smart city technologies. 'Smart', then, is increasingly central to UK urban development.Smart technology in UK cities takes many forms, from smart grids, to sensors and chargers embedded in the built environment, to smartphone apps, to online open data repositories and dashboards. Smart cities are much, much more than their technological devices, though: a smart city also requires smart urban policy-making, it produces smart products, it has 'smart citizens' and it has visions of what smart is and should be, and all these things converge and diverge in all sorts of ways. Currently, although local community and citizen participation is repeatedly asserted to be a prequisite for a successful smart city, almost nothing is known about how the development and rollout of smart policies and technologies actually engage city residents and workers. Who are smartphone apps designed for and what social needs do they ignore? What kind of populations are described by smart data hubs, and who do policies using such data therefore address? Indeed, various concerns have been voiced by journalists, academics and urban activists that smart activity may well not reach socially marginalised groups and individuals, for example, and that it might therefore contribute to increased levels of social polarisation in cities between the digital 'haves' and 'have-nots'.This project grasps the chance to answer these questions at a critical moment in the maturing of smart, and offers a real opportunity to generate social science that can both analyse and inform developments.Through a detailed empirical study of an actually-existing smart city - Milton Keynes - this project examines how smart policies, technologies, products, visions and engagement activities imagine particular kinds of users, citizens and consumers. It will thus enable a wide range of public and private-sector local stakeholders in MK to understand much better who their smart activity is engaging, how and why. These findings will then help to ensure that smart city activities are as accessible to as many different kinds of people as possible, and that as many people as possible are engaged by the smart city emerging in Milton Keynes.The project has been designed in collaboration with a range of local and national stakeholders in the UK smart city scene, including MK Council, MK:Smart, the Transport Systems Catapult, as well as Community Action MK, the umbrella group for voluntary and community groups in the city. This means that not only will its findings help MK to be a socially-inclusive smart city, but also that the project's findings will have impact on smart cities across the UK and beyond.