Ambient Approaches and Inquiries: Emerging Opportunities for Smart Cities and Future Cities

1. Introduction

Acuto (2020) offers “lessons for urban(izing)” claiming that while “COVID-19 has magnified the deficiencies of how we manage our cities” and may “drive a change in the way we think about cities and health” the global pandemic is also providing “a unique chance to rethink, replan, and redesign.” As such, concern regarding the implications for smart cities and regions of the global COVID-19 pandemic occurring during the writing of this work gives rise to opportunities for considering ambient approaches and inquires as a pathway to conducting some rethinking, replanning, and redesigning of smart cities. Smart cities in this work refer to urban areas and regions, characterized by more aware and engaged people, interacting with each other and aided by the use of more awareness enhancing technologies for a wide range of purposes including but not limited to well-being, livability, and data access and sharing.

This chapter employs an exploratory case study along with an explanatory correlational design where data are collected through the use of multiple methods including survey and in-depth interviews. In parallel with this data are also gathered systematically through group and individual discussions. The significance of this chapter pertains to the use of variables for well-being advanced for understanding smart cities in relation to visibilities and invisibilities, providing important insights as well as the potential for developing ambient approaches and inquiries. This chapter makes a contribution by a) extending the research literature for invisibilities and visibilities to include well-being and livability and other emergent complexities associated with data in the context of smart cities; and b) formulating a conceptual framework for augmented awareness for ambient InVisibilities in smart cities. As such, the objective of this chapter is described below.

Objective: The objective of this chapter is to explore and advance understandings of ambient approaches to inquiry in smart cities. The key research question posed is – What is the nature of the relationship between the ambient and InVisibilities as well-being in smart cities and why does the ambient and well-being matter?

2. Background And Overview

Keil (2020) points to “the threat of infectious disease in our planetary urban system” as possibly “an indication for how the world is connected” in a world of “extended urbanization” placing “limits to global urbanization” not to mention “challenges for urban planning” and yet, we are connected as well, digitally. Citing work by Connolly, Keil, and Ali (2020), Keil (2020) also notes that such extended urbanization is further challenged during this time of the COVID-19 global pandemic by “newfound closures, boundaries and limits that are imposed to make life liveable under global exposure.” Where McCann (2020), drawing on the work of Berman (1982), uses invisibility and visibility to discuss COVID-19 in the city, as one of four dialectal tensions, it is worth noting the other three dialectal tensions as they may have a particular relevance to smart cities – privilege and privation; selfishness and solidarity; and absence and presence. Indeed, well-being and livability may assist in making the case further for use of methods such as self-relevant research (Amabile and Hall, 2019) while acknowledging attendant cautions identified by the researchers.