Smart Cities in the Making: Learning from Milton Keynes

在过去的十年里，我们看到了现在通常被称为“智慧城市”的广泛出现。智慧城市通常被理解为利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（通过使公民更多地参与城市治理）。“智慧城市”是一个全球现象，许多城市都在规划未来的增长，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使英国成为全球智能城市交付中心，到2020年占据全球智能城市市场的10%。政府直接资助了几个大型智慧城市项目，赞助了三个与智慧计划直接相关的创新弹射器，英国标准协会正在制定实施智慧城市技术的框架。英国城市的智能技术有多种形式，从智能电网到嵌入建筑环境的传感器和充电器，再到智能手机应用程序，再到在线开放数据库和仪表盘。智慧城市不仅仅是它们的技术设备：智慧城市还需要智慧的城市决策，它生产智能产品，它拥有“智慧公民”，它对智能是什么和应该是什么有远见，所有这些都以各种方式融合和发散。目前，尽管当地社区和公民参与一再被认为是成功的智慧城市的先决条件，但几乎没有人知道智能政策和技术的开发和推出如何真正吸引城市居民和工人。智能手机应用程序是为谁设计的，它们忽略了哪些社交需求？智能数据中心描述了什么样的人群，使用这些数据的政策针对的是谁？事实上，记者、学者和城市活动家们已经表达了各种担忧，例如，智能活动可能无法触及社会边缘化群体和个人，因此可能会导致城市中数字“富人”和“穷人”之间的社会两极分化加剧。本项目抓住机会，在智能成熟的关键时刻回答这些问题，通过对一个实际存在的智慧城市--米尔顿·凯恩斯（Milton Keynes）的详细实证研究，该项目探讨了智能政策、技术、产品、愿景和参与活动如何想象特定类型的用户、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正在吸引谁，如何以及为什么。这些研究结果将有助于确保智慧城市活动尽可能多地为不同类型的人所使用，并确保尽可能多的人参与米尔顿凯恩斯新兴的智慧城市。该项目是与英国智慧城市领域的一系列地方和国家利益相关者合作设计的，包括MK理事会，MK：智能，运输系统弹射器，以及社区行动MK，伞组志愿和社区团体在城市。这意味着其研究结果不仅有助于MK成为一个具有社会包容性的智慧城市，而且该项目的研究结果将对英国及其他地区的智慧城市产生影响。

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.