The Smart City Promise: Investigating the Inclusiveness of Smart City Initiatives in Amsterdam

The Smart City Promise: Investigating the Inclusiveness of Smart City Initiatives in Amsterdam MA Media Studies thesis for New Media and Digital Culture University of Amsterdam 26 June 2017 Phillip Morris, pjm360@gmail.com Student Number: 10890831 Supervisor: dhr. dr. N.A.J.M. Niels van Doorn Second Reader: dr. M.D. Marc Tuters Word Count: 24,947 Morris 2 ABSTRACT Cities have played an important role in the course of human history, and technology has played an important part in shaping cities. Cities use different labels depending on their development focus, with the latest trend to be seen as utilizing technology to become a "smart city". Smart cities often promise inclusive citizen engagement and increased quality of life. In practice this means developing a local tech economy to spur the innovation need to solve urban challenges, and capture some of the economic success of Silicon Valley. While a focus on technology can boost the local economy, the current state of social equality in Silicon Valley indicates that it is not the best approach for cities wanting to avoid marginalizing segments of its population which has the effect of denying them their right to participate in making the city. The city of Amsterdam is a top ranked smart city, guided by the principles of "openness, entrepreneurship, collaboration and inclusion". The promise of being inclusive is not being met which then endangers the promise of raising the quality of life for the marginalized. This appears to be a symptom of low overall citizen engagement. So far only those with high digital literacy appear to be engaging with Amsterdam as a smart city. By evaluating local smart city initiatives, and speaking with residents, this thesis found that a lack of knowledge about the existence of smart city initiatives was the main barrier to citizen engagement. Keywords: Amsterdam, Smart, City, Inclusive, Knowledge Mile Morris 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Introduction 5 1.1 Statement of The Problem 7 1.1.1 The Silicon Valley Divide 7 1.2 Thesis Outline 9 2 Theoretical Framework 11 2.1 Society and the City 11 3 Literature Review 16 3.1 Enabling the Right to the City 16 3.2 Technology and the City 19 3.2.1 Historical Context for The Smart City 20 3.2.2 The Smart City 22 3.2.3 Smart City Strategies 23 3.2.4 Right to the Smart City 28 3.3 The Proto-Smart City 32 3.3.1 Designing the Technopolis 32 3.3.2 Outcome of the Technopolis Path to Development 34 4 Contextual Background 38 4.1 The Situation in The Netherlands 38 4.2 Amsterdam as a Smart City 40 4.2.1 The Structure of Amsterdam Smart City 42 4.2.2 Smart City Benchmarking in Amsterdam 42 4.2.3 Evaluating Websites 45 5 Research Method 47 5.1 City Selection 47 5.2 Qualitative Data Sources 48 5.3 Limitations 51 6 Results 53 6.1 The Websites 53 6.1.1 The Amsterdam Economic Board 54 6.1.2 Amsterdam Smart City 56 6.1.3 The Knowledge Mile 61 6.2 Amsterdam's Strategic Smart City Choices 65 6.2.1 Initiative Analysis 69 6.3 Citizen Perspective 74 7 Discussion 76 8 Conclusion 79 Morris 4 Bibliography 81 Morris 5 1 Introduction Cities have played an important role in the course of human history, and technology has played an important part in shaping cities. Once our ancestors developed the technology to grow food, they were able to settle permanently in one place and form early cities. Large numbers of people, gathering in the same area, encouraged the exchange of ideas that allowed technology to advance, and be incorporated into the functioning of the city. Along with technology cities were shaped by their economy. A port city whose economy runs on trade encourages a different society to develop than one centered around a university. Cities now take monikers depending on their development focus and vision for what a good city should be, and often economic growth is the means to reach that vision. The area around San Francisco known as Silicon Valley got its name by being a hub for technology, that, as the name suggests, requires large amounts of silicon (Gromov). As policymakers in the region focused on economic growth through the technology industry they were blind to the growing inequality around them. Growing up black in America led me to conclude that economic growth did not mean much to the lives of society's marginalized groups, which in America means not being white, male, Christian and straight. My lived experience matches Schmelzer's insight that the focus on economic growth masks the realities of life on the ground for marginalized people. Past a certain point, which for most Western countries was in the 1970's, growth stops improving the overall quality of life (Schmelzer 263). My family was comfortably middle class, but we often lived in ethnic neighborhoods where poverty was prevalent. Despite the near constant GDP growth in the US at the time (McCulla, Holdren and Smith 16), the quality of life did not improve at a consistent rate. People got raises, but much of that extra income got absorbed by rising prices. In fact, things got worse for many of the people on government assistance, because their benefits were not keeping up with price increases. When I visit places I used to live, the difference between poor and affluent neighborhoods is much the same as I remember from my childhood; the poor neighborhoods are packed with working-class people of color. I currently live in the city of Amsterdam, which is a leading example among the world's smart cities (Cohen, Top Ten Smartest Cities). Amsterdam has been a leading finance center for centuries, which has allowed it to also become a center for new industries, technology, and innovations (Johansson, Karlsson and Stough 219). From the 1970s onward, Morris 6 the Dutch have made cities more people friendly, most famously by making pedestrians and bikes the priority on the roads, and this has raised the quality of life significantly (Hajer and Ton 117). The population has grown to include over 800,000 people from 180 nationalities, and from all walks of life (iAmsterdam, Facts & Figures). But there is a great feeling when living in the city that cannot be captured in facts and figures and must be experienced instead. As Amsterdam pursues its goal of being a smart city, I hope that unquantifiable something survives. In an interview for Amsterdam Innovation Arena (the division of Amsterdam Arena, tasked with incorporating new technology into the building) the mayor of Amsterdam Eberhard van der Laan said the city wants to be smart by applying technological solutions to urban problems in collaboration with citizens, and importantly, all citizens. My motivation in this thesis is to assess how well Amsterdam's smart city development fares at meeting the promise of improving the lives of citizens by examining their inclusion in the smart city development process. I would like to know if only certain groups in Dutch society are engaging with Amsterdam as a smart city, and if this is the case then why. My thesis follows the understanding of the European Institute for Gender Equality that groups of people can be subject to marginalization depending on the culture and context of society, and that it can be based on a wide range of characteristics including ethnicity, sexual orientation, education or income. The academic literature on the effects of smart city development is minimal (Winden; Vanolo). As an example, I found one study that also examined ASC but focused on the technical side of ASC projects (Winden et al.). This required that I broaden my theoretical framework to include other fields. Cities are complex phenomena which makes an interdisciplinary approach to studying them more comprehensive. As a result, this thesis draws the principle of the "right to the city" from the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre (Writing on Cities), which states that the city making process should be open to everyone, the work of urban theorist Richard Florida, and incorporates some economic theory. My hypothesis is that a new characteristic for marginalization are developing related to technological ability (Florida; Straubhaar et al.) and that certain groups underrepresented in the technology industry are engaging less with smart city initiatives, and are thus not making use of their right to the city to shape the city's future. To that end, this thesis will contribute to the smart city field by answering the question: Morris 7 How can Amsterdam's smart city development be improved to support greater social inclusion? As part of answering this question I needed to answer the following sub-questions: 1. What is Amsterdam's approach to smart city development? 2. Why is greater social inclusion need? 1.1 Statement of The Problem Many cities refer Silicon Valley as an example of smart city development because the transition involves the development of a local tech economy (Picon 149; Florida). While Silicon Valley has become a successful economic region for the development of innovative technologies, it is also a region of societal conflict between those inside and outside of the tech industry. This section will illustrate why Silicon Valley is not the best example to follow for cities that want to spread the benefits of smart development equitably. 1.1.1 The Silicon Valley Divide Silicon Valley historian Gregory Gromov marks the development of the area around San Francisco, California into Silicon Valley with Stanford University's financial troubles in the mid-20th century.

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