Real-time ethics — A technology enabled paradigm of everyday ethics in smart cities: Shifting sustainability responsibilities through citizen empowerment

Abstract

Conventional sustainable urban development practices are predominantly focused on intervention measures aimed at larger urban stakeholders, providing limited room for citizen engagement. In the emerging context of smart cities, Internet and Communication Technologies (ICT) are becoming technology-enablers of citizen participation towards sustainable urban development targets. This article highlights the opportunity of ICT-enabled citizen-empowerment, based on recent discoveries of behavioral psychology, and raises questions about the accompanying challenges. The aim of such design is to enable citizens to understand their own role in relation to wider sustainability issues, in particular to aid them in decision-making processes. This may result into a transition of increased citizen responsibility that could entail an unprecedented number of daily decisions and ethical trade-offs. To facilitate this transition, the growing stream of ethical considerations in everyday life, "real-time ethics", require a distinct interdisciplinary discussion.