The Open Smart Cities Guide is the end result of Open Smart Cities in Canada, a year long collaborative research project led by Open North. This guide provides a first ever definition for an Open Smart City and is intended as a starter kit for city stakeholders and decision makers. We expect that this living document will grow as we receive more input and learn about additional people, projects, practices, and resources that contribute to Open Smart Cities.
Direct links to project outputs are provided below:
- Open Smart Cities Guide v1.0
- Open Smart Cities in Canada: Assessment Report
- Open Smart Cities in Canada: Executive Summary of Environmental Scan and Case Studies
- Open Smart Cities FAQ
- Webinars two and three.
5 Characteristics of Open Smart Cities
The Open Smart Cities Guide V1.0 is structured according to the five characteristics of an Open Smart City, which include:
1. Governance in an open smart city is ethical, accountable, and transparent
These principles apply to the governance of social and technical platforms which includes data, algorithms, skills, infrastructure, and knowledge.
2. An open smart city is participatory, collaborative, and responsive
It is a city where government, civil society, private sector, the media, academia and residents meaningfully participate in the governance of the city and have shared rights and responsibilities. This entails a culture of trust and critical thinking and fair, just, inclusive, and informed approaches.
3. An Open Smart City uses data and technologies that are fit for purpose, can be repaired and queried, their source code are open, adhere to open standards, are interoperable, durable, secure, and where possible locally procured and scalable
Data and technology are used and acquired in such a way as to reduce harm and bias, increase sustainability, and enhance flexibility. An Open Smart City may defer when warranted to automated decision-making and therefore designs these systems to be legible, responsive, adaptive, and accountable
4. In an Open Smart City, data management is the norm and custody and control over data generated by smart technologies is held and exercised in the public interest
Data governance includes sovereignty, residency, open by default, security, individual and social privacy, and grants people authority over their personal data.
5. In an Open Smart City, it is recognized that data and technology are not the solution to many of the systemic issues cities face, nor are there always quick fixes
These problems require innovative, sometimes long term, social, organizational, economic, and political processes and solutions.
Acknowledgements
Open Smart Cities in Canada is a collaborative project. We would like to thank smart city representatives from the cities of Edmonton, Guelph, Montréal, and Ottawa and officials from the provinces of British Columbia and Ontario for sharing their time, expertise and experiences with us. Furthermore, this project benefits from contributions made by the project’s core team of experts and researchers. We are grateful to Professor Tracey P. Lauriault (Carleton University), David Fewer, LL.M., (Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic {CIPPIC}), and Professor Mark Fox (University of Toronto) for providing their expert advice on the design of research and its outputs. Finally, we thank graduate students Stephen Letts and Carly Livingstone (Carleton University) for research assistance and editing over the course of the project.
Funded by Natural Resources Canada’s GeoConnections program in 2018.