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Report (part 1) of workshop “Data Commons for smart cities”
[this report is also published on https://www.bijt.org/wordpress/tag/workshop-report-data-commons/]
This is the first part of a 3-part report of a workshop held on 6 October 2022 about the data commons and the smart city, which I co-organized. Links to part 2 >>, and to part 3 >>.
| Background of the workshop
In our datafied smart cities, the creation of value out of data lies mostly in the hands of companies and governments. As data is considered to be a new type of resource, questions arise around for instance the governance of this resource but also its potential for citizen agency. These two approaches to the data commons – as on the one hand a matter of governance and regulation, and on the other hand its promise of increasing democratic civic participation and inclusion – were central to the one-day workshop Data Commons and the Smart City, which was organized by Utrecht University and the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG). The data commons are one of the models advanced in academic literature and political practice to restructure our economies and societies in more bottom-up inclusive, and democratic ways. During this workshop, the promises and pitfalls were discussed with experts from a variety of backgrounds. In the morning session we laid the groundwork for speaking about data commons in relation to smart cities. Workshop participants were asked to show an exemplary case and make an opening statement about what the data commons means for them. Guiding questions were: What is the concrete problem or case your contribution deals with, and how can your example of a data-commons from your own research or practice shed new light on what works, what does not, and why? What makes it a data/digital commons? What kind of (digital) resource does it revolve around: data, access, infrastructures, etc.? What kind of community are we seeing? What are the two most important challenges or problems your concrete case draws attention to? The workshop was organized by Gijs van Maanen & Nadya Purtova (EU funded INFO-LEG project), Michiel de Lange (focus area “Governing the Digital Society” GDS), and Jörg Pohle (Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society HIIG). This workshop is part of a seminar and workshop series on the data commons. Participants: Anna Artyushina, Tommaso Fia, Alexander Mörelius-Wulff & Emeline Banzuzi, Tasniem Anwar & Berna Keskindemir, Martijn de Waal, Jiska Engelbert, Gijs van Maanen, Nadya Purtova, Michiel de Lange, Jörg Pohle. 6 Oct 2022, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Französische Straße 9 Berlin. |
Workshop morning presentations
In the morning session we laid the groundwork for speaking about data commons in relation to smart cities. Workshop participants were asked to show an exemplary case and make an opening statement about what the data commons means for them. Guiding questions were: What is the concrete problem or case your contribution deals with, and how can your example of a data-commons from your own research or practice shed new light on what works, what does not, and why? What makes it a data/digital commons? What kind of (digital) resource does it revolve around: data, access, infrastructures, etc.? What kind of community are we seeing? What are the two most important challenges or problems your concrete case draws attention to?
Image credit: Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society
After a round of brief introductions, Tommaso Fia opened up the round of short presentations. He spoke about commons-based data governance in the smart city and shared lessons from two cases: Sidewalk Toronto and Barcelona’s DECODE Project. There is no agreement about what is a smart city, Tommaso noted, nor is there agreement on how to govern data in the smart city. Smart city models disguise processes of data appropriation by private enterprises. On the one hand, there are discussions about the arrangement of data ownership by one or more stakeholder parties. On the other hand, increasing attention is being paid to decentralized data infrastructures in public-led projects. A key issue that is often neglected however, is how value generated by citizen’s (inter)action flows back to the community, in what can be called ‘positive externalities’. Current ways of governing data in ‘public’ ways, like the DECODE project in Barcelona, still do not avoid value extraction, and do not sufficiently center on the communal rights of citizens. How then can these positive externalities be consistently handled? Tommaso mobilized the ideas of Fritz Schumacher (Small is beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered, 1973) and his model of large-scale ownership. From this work, an idea that can be applied to the data commons is the participation of the public in half of the profits of private actors.
What I liked about this talk is how it enters the debate about the data commons not from the angle of threats and obstacles, but from an affirmative angle. With the term ‘positive externalities’, the possibilities for community benefits derived from data are highlighted. Of course this still leaves open many questions about, for example, persuading or forcing businesses and government to give 50% of their profit away, as one of the other participants remarked; or how ‘positive externalities’ can be defined in the first place, with regards to scale, timeframe and scope (small/large benefits; short/long term; limited number of people/large group).
Anna Artyushina, who participated in an earlier online seminar, discussed the GKC framework (Governing the Knowledge Commonsframework), which has been developed by Frischmann, Madison, & Strandburg (2014) with the aim of analyzing (and designing) a series of issues that are typically associated with governing the commons. One of those issues concerns the definition of value (and for whom). Anna observed that digital data does not have an inherent value. In most jurisdictions data does not constitute property. So value is fluid, and the curation of data is dynamic. As to the who, Anna noted that for Ostrom commons were always run by community, whereas for GKC it can be private property (commons can be ‘nested’ into private frameworks). Practically speaking, GKC is about managing contestation. Anne gave the examples of CyberToronto and – again – DECODE to make the point that in Barcelona, the digital sovereignty movement and policy was informed by the political context of Catalunya’s struggle for independence from central Spain.
What I found interesting in Anna’s talk was that in a sense the idea of ’data sovereignty’ in the context of Barcelona appears to be born out of controversy. I wondered whether that friction could help to include more people in the discussion about smart city futures, as we research in our project Responsible Cities? Anna replied that in the GKC framework, resources are considered a social construct and that community (formation) is crucial for that construction. In the context of Barca, the aim was to build a smart city from solidarity, not competition. Another aspect I found interesting was Anna’s observation that there may be stigma attached to data reuse: is the source reputable; e.g. who owns the cameras that are recording traffic? Like the other point about the political context of Catalunya, this suggests we must take a highly situational and historical approach to understanding data as a collective (common) resource.
The third talk was by Emeline Banzuzi & Alexander Mörelius-Wulff (also on behalf of Alina Wernick who couldn’t attend), speaking about their project “The Long-Term Human Rights Risks of Smart City Technologies”. The provocative title and opening question of their talk was ”Where do all the smart city pilots go?” They studied this issue through interviewing stakeholders. Stated reasons include: some companies live of R&D funding without ever commercializing; it’s difficult to reach the stage of procurement; it’s hard to sustain continuity, this depends on community management. Currently, they are in limbo about two possible approaches: the “What is the Problem Represented to be“ approach (WPR), or the already mentioned Governance of Knowledge Commons (GKC) approach.
In the ensuing discussion afterwards, an interesting point was made about the performative element of smart city pilots. These smart city pilots are about showing that a city is committed by investments and showcase projects, that they want to export knowledge and smart city solutions in a replicable way to other cities. This raises further questions about cooky-cutter smart city solutions and one size fits all models; about which cities profit from being ‘in the center’ of technological developments and attention from tech-companies, and which cities are doomed to remain on the receiving end of the stick, while perhaps getting nothing more than ill-fitting solutions invented elsewhere that do not really work in other urban contexts.
This report continues with part 2 >>
Directly to part 3 >>
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International