Slide 1
Bristol Futures City Innovation Team
Involving citizens & communities in the development of Smart Cities
Kevin O’Malley City InnovationTeam Manager
Slide 2
Bristol Futures City Innovation Team
Know thyself
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Bristol Futures City Innovation Team
Why involve citizens in the development of smart cities?
l Smart Cities programmes are not just technology programmes- people want more liveable Cities not Smarter Cities
l Citizens understand the problems intimately l One size won’t fit all l Buy in and support critical to success
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Bristol Futures City Innovation Team
Successful Smart Cities should be...
l Useful: responding to real user needs l Usable: intuitive and straightforward to interact
with l Accessible: Inclusive and open for all to use l Acceptable: secure, safe, enabling, benign,
trustworthy l ….oh, and the tech should work
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Bristol Futures City Innovation Team
Involving citizens
l The challenge - Size and diversity of Cities - Smart City concepts & technology - Access to ‘hard to reach’ citizens
l Citizens have existing relationships with Authorities- not always positive- interactions can feel ‘top down’
l Trusted third party intermediaries with access, local credibility & ability to communicate
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Bristol Futures City Innovation Team
How to involve citizens
l City as Testbed and Living Lab, co-producing solutions
l Local partners providing regular support, intervention and enabling active participation
l Bristol Living Lab used effectively in multiple projects over 7 years
l Plans to extend Living Lab network and form digital citizens panel
l Ethics, security and privacy board
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Bristol Futures City Innovation Team
Conclusions l Cities are dynamic, characterful patchworks of
communities and neighbourhoods l Cities aren't neat and tidy l Top down, homogenous citywide solutions may be
resisted l Infrastructure and systems need to be flexible enough
to support distinctiveness, diversity and quirkiness of Cities and enable communities to build the services they want (Open Programmable City)
l If not we may end up knowing the location of everything but the value of nothing.
Slide 8
Bristol Futures City Innovation Team
Thanks
www.connectingbristol.org
@ConnectBristol
