Citizen established Smart City: A practical guide for local authorities
Cities that are citizen-driven show significant success and replicability rate in delivering smart city projects. This is due to the co-creation aspect in the delivery process ensures that the vision is better accepted by the citizen, which in result increases the likelihood of the improvement of the citizen's wellbeing. Preston et al. (2020) provides a practical guide for the local government to better facilitate citizen engagement in creating a smarter city.
The first practical point is to create a comfortable atmosphere that promotes transparency throughout the engagement sessions, thus fostering healthy and balanced relationships between stakeholders. It is also important to involve citizens early in the process rather than merely informing and verifying with the citizen later in the project lifecycle. Secondly, the engagement process should be facilitated skilfully. As projects may involve diverse types of stakeholders with different experience, background and involvement in the project, facilitators should attune their approach according to the different needs of the involved stakeholders. Lastly, in maximising the potential of citizen engagement, allocating enough time is crucial to develop meaningful insight and innovation to the initiative. Facilitators should be open to changes and input during the project development, so that every step of action is inline with the needs of the citizens.
From the study of two projects in the City of Nottingham, Preston et al. argue that moving forward smart cities should be labelled as cities that lead the transformation with the intelligence of their citizens. Citizen engagement in Smart City should be a process of social innovation that allows citizens to co-produce the public value unique to their specific need.
Reference:
Preston, S., Mazhar, M. U., & Bull, R. (2020). Citizen Engagement for Co-Creating Low Carbon Smart Cities: Practical Lessons from Nottingham City Council in the UK. Energies, 13(24), 6615.
