Sensing Cities and Getting Smarter: Awareness and the Internet of Things and People

1. Introduction

This chapter focuses on the construct of awareness in relation to sensing and smartness in the context of 21^st century cities as an approach to exploring aware technologies and aware people. Gil-Garcia, Zhang, and Puron-Cid (2016) provide a conceptualization of smartness in government involving an integrative and multi-dimensional view along 14 dimensions, one of which is citizen engagement while Loi (2019) speaks in terms of “acceptable smartness” in everyday contexts such as “home, car, and workspace.” Others dimensions of smartness identified by Gil-Garcia et al. (2016) include: creativity, effectiveness, efficiency, equality, entrepreneurialism, openness, resiliency, technology services, integration, innovation, evidence-based, citizen centricity, and sustainability. Citing Nam and Pardo (2011) and Torres, Pina, and Acerete (2006), citizen engagement is said to have “the potential to develop citizen’s sense of ownership of their city, enhance the local authority’s awareness of their needs, and ultimately reshape the citizen government relationship” (Gil-Garcia et al., 2016). In coming to an understanding of smartness involving the digital, Böhlen and Frei (2010) addressed conceptual and design deficits for ambient intelligence in the context of urban environments, calling for pervasive sensing issues to be included in urban planning in terms of a negotiating of interests across public and private spaces. To this end and in response to critical voices, Böhlen and Frei (2010) argued for a “re-making of urbanity with pervasive technologies as a means to invigorate urban life” for improved livability while “recalibrating all of the ambient intelligence research” in order for cities to “scale to urban satisfaction.” In arguing for everyone to work together, despite the many challenges, in building “ambient cities,” Böhlen and Frei (2010) were perhaps opening the way for ambient urbanities and the notion of smartness as conceptualized by Gil-Garcia et al. (2016).

• Objectives: The key objectives of this chapter are to explore: a) awareness as it manifests in the city through people and their experience of sensing and smartness in the city; b) where intelligence resides; and c) what constitutes and contributes to the notion of making cities smarter and Böhlen and Frei’s (2010) notion of “augmenting urbanity.” As such, this exploration gives rise to the key question to be explored in this chapter – How does awareness inform urbanity in smart cities?

2. Background And Overview

Deakin and Al Waer (2011) identify a transition from intelligent to smart cities focusing on social intelligence to highlight the “information-rich and highly communicative qualities.” According to Deakin and Al Waer (2011), “networks of innovation and creative partnerships” play a “critically insightful role” in the embedding of intelligence in support of the “learning, knowledge transfer and capacity building exercises servicing” the “community led transition.” Hinting at the smart part of our being, Judge and Powles (2015) argue that, “our default way of interacting with the world isn’t by peering at screens” suggesting instead that “we respond to the environment, to what it offers us, in an automatic and intuitive way” such that “in most everyday scenarios, we don’t see our things as things, we just use them.” This exploration of awareness is operationalized through an inquiry into the movements, interactions, and practices of people in the technology-rich environment of cities and communities. Drawing on the work of Rickert (2013) and of Lévy (2015; 2013) on space and spatialities (actors in urban spaces), in relation to the construct of awareness, the vibrancy and pulse of urban areas is probed. Using an abbreviated set of questions from Anderson’s (2006; 2011) body insight scale (BIS), adapted here as a mechanism for sensing in urban environments, an early stage attempt is made to highlight the importance of human capabilities and potentials used in conjunction with Anderson’s (2004) exploratory method of intuitive inquiry.