[Conference] new technological élites as a tool for the citizens-relationship management in the smart city. the icity project in bologna.

New " technological élites" as a tool for the citizens-relationship management in the smart city. The icity

project in Bologna.Valentina Bazzarin & Pina Lalli

Dep. Political and Social SciencesUniversity of Bologna

Corresponding author: [email protected]

SESSION 17: De-constructing the Smart City, Reassembling Urban Life

Aim of this research is to use an empirical case in order to critically analyse the definition of a smart city ecosystem. We will focus on Bologna (Italy) and on the engagement actions planned in the "icity" project funded by the European Commission.

Goal of this research

Source: http://www.icityproject.eu/content/presentation

European Digital Agenda and the Smart city ecosystem

Source: http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/smart-cities Source: http://iperbole2020.comune.bologna.it/agenda-digitale/

Smart cities and smart communities

Source: http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/smart-cities Source: http://www.icityproject.eu/news-categories/press-kit

The civic network and the social capital

Source: http://www.comune.bologna.it/retecivica/galleria_immagini/106:5501 Source: http://www.comune.bologna.it/comunita/

Icity main objective is to identify new ways of collaboration using new technologies. Citizens are supposed to promote the civic demands to access public information and open-infrastructures to re-use it as well as to explore other ways of offering public services that usually are guaranteed by public administration only. In particular, icity aims at building a common platform where “civic hackers” could realize a progressive crowd-working to create smart application.

A research question on the direction of this processes

source: http://icity-devp.icityproject.com/apiresources

Framework - Italy

source:http://ec.europa.eu/priorities/digital-single-market/docs/factsheets/italy_en.pdf

Since January 2014 we observed the engagement actions run by the Municipality of Bologna. We attended five so-called "engagement meetings" in Bologna, we observed the participation processes in the on-line social platforms and we interviewed in depth four participants. Moreover, we are considering the parallel on-going process in which the civic network of the City of Bologna "iperbole2020" is updated and re-designed, in order to compare the activities of participants in the two processes.

Methodology

Why we compare the two processes?

icity project and iperbole2020 (civic network) are different but parallel processes. However they share:

● the vision → market oriented use of open data and open infrastructures;

● the staff of local promoters;● the target (developers and civic hackers)● most of the engagement events and

activities

icity: the app gallery

Total APPs developed 8 listed in the websiteMost of them are 1.0 version and if you explore the comments on GitHub or Google Play you can find on average 3 comments on each proposal. Except Ucitizens APP.

Sources:: https://github.com/bromagosa/icity-node-demo and http://icity-devp.icityproject.com/apiresources/appgallery

Iperbole 2020: the community and the app gallery

sources: http://www.comune.bologna.it/comunita/node e http://iperbole2020.comune.bologna.it/bologna-apps/

Access in Open Data: Iperbole 2020 the civic network

Source: http://www.comune.bologna.it/comunita/open-data

Our results show that although icity project partially failed in its technological aims, it is succeeding in raising, engaging and mobilizing an important group of people: what we called a “new elite of technological citizens”. Probably this result is due to the parallel process of creation of the Iperbole2020, the “brand new civic network” of the City of Bologna.

In this project we can identify a “skilled citizens-relationship management" able to develop both social capital - bridging the elite of technological citizens with some local schools, for instance - and bounding a new community of civic hackers as a new type of social influencers.

Result: a skilled citizens-relationship management

Concluding we can say that icity project in Bologna catalysed the reassembling of urban social networks even failing in its technological determinism. The long tail of this project could promote a widespread digital empowerment, especially if its promoters will be aware of their role as curators and managers of the network relationships of the “new technological elite”.

Conclusion

Source: http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/italian-piazzas-the-future-of-public-space

Acknowledgements: part of this research project was funded by Comune di Bologna and icity project. Icity was funded by the European commission inside CIP-ICT-PSP.2011.5.1. Moreover we successfully collaborated with all the civil servants involved in this project (Leda Guidi, Giovanni Farneti, Daniele Tarozzi, Andrea Iacovitti, Raffaella Gentili and Michele D’Alena) and the company that was in charge to realize the engagement activities, Snark, and in particular with one of the founders, Gaspare Caliri. Finally

we would like to mention and to thank all our colleagues, both in Italy and in Catalunya, friends and families for their support and useful comments.

Thanks for your attention!