Designing Community Technology Initiatives: A Literature Review

Citizens and communities play a significant role in shaping the cities they live in, providing a human touch to the development of smart cities. Designers and researchers aim to support this movement through developing (partly) digital technologies together with citizens and communities. However, while the body of examples on this topic is steadily growing, less effort has been made to aggregate existing research and map the underlying processes. In order to contribute to a better understanding of community technology initiatives, this article presents a qualitative systematic literature review on the design and deployment of (partly) digital technologies for civic communities. The article outlines five important topics in these community technology initiatives, based on a qualitative analysis of findings from 36 empirical studies. The five topics are: connectedness to the community context, establish(ed) networks and relationships, balanced roles and responsibilities, diverse and inclusive involvement, and collaborative development of community technologies. The article provides a starting point for future research and design of community technology initiatives and offers an introduction for researchers new to the field.