Re-thinking the Role of Citizens in Evaluating Quality of Life in the Smart City

Abstract

Cities around the world are struggling to cope with global challenges such as climate change, resource constraints, overpopulation, energy, and infrastructure management. To this effect, the “Smart City” concept over the last 20 years has promised to be the gateway to sustainable development and improved quality of life in cities through the use of innovative technologies and participation with citizens and users in the urban environment. Despite these promises, the concept has been largely criticised for being largely technology and market-driven rather than being able to solve problems for people living in the city. Existing research has identified that the citizen is largely just a bystander in the development of smart cities and that solutions more often than not fail to address the needs and wants of citizens. Still, the concept is being adopted all around the world and smart projects are being implemented continuously through public funding. Although there are multiple definitions of the concept, citizen engagement is understood as a crucial part of the approach and improving quality of life the overall goal of the smart city.

This study attempts to find out what role citizens can play in evaluating for quality of life by attempting to describe the relationship between the two in the context of smart city projects in Amsterdam. The inability of smart cities and smart projects to be able to identify their impact with respect quality of life demands the involvement of citizens in the process. Therefore, this research takes an interpretive approach to contextually study the setting of Amsterdam as a smart city and projects within it. The results show that Amsterdam despite being labelled a “smart city” does not call itself as such and is moving away from the term. Furthermore, its approach to development is inherently citizen-centric and places a large importance on the quality of life although, challenges exist. The smart city projects explored in this research highlight that there is a strong relationship between citizen engagement and quality of life. To this, the research finds that without engaging with citizens it would not be possible for developers and policymakers to assess the subjective values that matter to citizens as experienced in two out of the four projects studied. Despite the challenges observed within projects, results from this study support the assumption that that citizen engagement can help in identifying and understanding factors affecting the quality of life and improve assessment for it.