Smart Cities in the Making: Learning from Milton Keynes

The past decade has seen the widespread emergence of what are now often called 'smart cities'. Smart cities are generally understood to use the data produced by digital technologies to enhance their sustainability (by encouraging more efficient use of resources), economic growth (through innovating new products and markets) and openness (by enabling greater citizen participation in city governance). 'Smart cities' are a global phenomenon at the heart of how many cities are planning for future growth, and the UK is no exception. Over half of UK cities are implementing smart projects, and the government's Information Economy Strategy aims to make the UK a global hub of smart city delivery by capturing 10 per cent of the global smart city market by 2020. The government directly funds several large smart city projects, sponsors three innovation Catapults with direct links to smart initiatives, and the British Standards Institute is developing a framework for implementing smart city technologies. 'Smart', then, is increasingly central to UK urban development.

Smart technology in UK cities takes many forms, from smart grids, to sensors and chargers embedded in the built environment, to smartphone apps, to online open data repositories and dashboards. Smart cities are much, much more than their technological devices, though: a smart city also requires smart urban policy-making, it produces smart products, it has 'smart citizens' and it has visions of what smart is and should be, and all these things converge and diverge in all sorts of ways. Currently, although local community and citizen participation is repeatedly asserted to be a prequisite for a successful smart city, almost nothing is known about how the development and rollout of smart policies and technologies actually engage city residents and workers. Who are smartphone apps designed for and what social needs do they ignore? What kind of populations are described by smart data hubs, and who do policies using such data therefore address? Indeed, various concerns have been voiced by journalists, academics and urban activists that smart activity may well not reach socially marginalised groups and individuals, for example, and that it might therefore contribute to increased levels of social polarisation in cities between the digital 'haves' and 'have-nots'.

This project grasps the chance to answer these questions at a critical moment in the maturing of smart, and offers a real opportunity to generate social science that can both analyse and inform developments.

Through a detailed empirical study of an actually-existing smart city - Milton Keynes - this project examines how smart policies, technologies, products, visions and engagement activities imagine particular kinds of users, citizens and consumers. It will thus enable a wide range of public and private-sector local stakeholders in MK to understand much better who their smart activity is engaging, how and why. These findings will then help to ensure that smart city activities are as accessible to as many different kinds of people as possible, and that as many people as possible are engaged by the smart city emerging in Milton Keynes.

The project has been designed in collaboration with a range of local and national stakeholders in the UK smart city scene, including MK Council, MK:Smart, the Transport Systems Catapult, as well as Community Action MK, the umbrella group for voluntary and community groups in the city. This means that not only will its findings help MK to be a socially-inclusive smart city, but also that the project's findings will have impact on smart cities across the UK and beyond.

SCiM responds to two ESRC strategic priorities. Smart interventions are forecast to have expanding commercial significance and learning from MK to get those interventions right will contribute to the UK's 'economic performance and sustainable growth'; the project's findings will also assist in the generation of the inclusive and accessible version of smart urbanism needed for 'a vibrant and fair society'.

In pilot research conducted for this project, we were told repeatedly by many of the stakeholders making MK smart that they struggle to understand how smart technologies - but also smart policy, produces and visions - engage people in the city. The need to get people using smart devices is very evident to these stakeholders, but how to do it is not. It is in this context that SCiM's analysis of how smart activities prduce diverse categories of social differences will significantly enhance smart city stakeholders' understanding of how smart works, enabling them to understand what kinds of identities and practices their activity is enabling and what it is not.

SCiM is therefore timely and relevant with scope for deep and wide impact across commercial and policy realms. Its planned impacts will improve the performance of smart city commercial initiatives that contribute to city and UK economic prosperity, provide evidence to enhance policy relating to social outcomes in emerging smart city developments, enhance the effectiveness of smart public services by increasing understanding of the outcomes of smart policy interventions, and contribute to public awareness of and engagement with smart city infrastructures. It will do this by developing nuanced understandings of how smart data, products, policies, visions and engagement activity create social differences.

The project will enhance and progress its non-academic impacts through its Advisory Group (AG). The AG will be chaired by Prof Allan Cochrane, who has considerable experience both of MK and as an urban researcher. Confirmed members are:
- Academic: Prof Rob Kitchin, Geography, Maynooth University; Prof Ola Söderström, Geography, Université de Neuchâtel; Prof Alessandro Aurigi, Urban Design, Plymouth University; Dr Jennifer Gabrys, Sociology, Goldsmiths;
- Policy: Geoff Snelson, Director of Strategy, MK Council; Neil Fulton, Director of LUTZ project, Transport Systems Catapult; Martin Pett, Principal Technologist (Human Factors and Visualisation), Transport Systems Catapult; Prof Enrico Motta, MK:Smart Project Director; Prof Gerd Kortuem, lead of Citizens and Education strands of MK:Smart; Saviour Alfino, Project Manager, British Standards Institute; Dr James Evans, project lead for Manchester Triangulum project; Matthew Cockburn, Project Manager for City Innovation, Bristol City Council. A member will also be recruited from the Future Cities Catapult.
- Commercial: Prajakt Deotale, Business Transformation and Strategy Consultant, TechMahindra; Stewart Bailey, Marketing Manager, Virtual Viewing.
- Other: Stuart Turner, Trustee of Fred Roche Foundation; Sheila Thornton, Chair of Trustees, Community Action MK.

The AG will be convened 4 times during the project's life: at 3 months, to set initial priorities; at 9 months, to review progress and design impact deliverables and pathways; at 15 months, to review the project's analysis, design the end-of-project event and conference and enhance the project's impact content and pathways; and at 21 months, to advise the project team on the post-project academic and non-academic impact of its work. Each WP lead will also meet with a relevant sub-group of the AG members five times, in order to refine the WP design to be responsive to stakeholder interests and to gain more detailed, sector-specific advice about impact pathways. Meetings of the whole AG will be face-to-face; sub-group meetings will be face-to-face where possible but also utilise skype conferencing.