Future scenarios as a tool for citizen engagement in Smart Cities

Abstract

Urban Digital Transformation opens many opportunities for cities, but there are also risks that the evolution of our cities may be driven by the unforeseen effects of emerging technologies or by the interests of technology corporations, rather than by the ethical values and real needs of society. The active engagement of citizens can be the key for an effective alignment between technological progress and societal progress. However, most citizens are essentially unaware of changes, much less of their more profound future implications. There is also scarcity of contexts where they can engage in informed discussions about the future of their city and the cocreation of new services. In this work, we explore how Future Thinking and Responsible Research and Innovation may provide a methodological background for promoting systematic reflection about possible futures and elicit generic policy guidelines for novel urban digital services. The goal is to help closing the gap between science, policy makers and society, by helping to shape strategic agendas for innovation on Smart Cities. The key contribution is a thorough analysis of the key motivations associated with this type of societal reflection and the proposal of a novel framework for the responsible design of digital services for cities. The proposed framework is conceived to work as a large-scale and open science project, where multiple stakeholders could concurrently add contributions to this reflection framework.