The right to the city and data protection for developing citizen-centric digital cities

ABSTRACT

Smart city urban development seems inevitable for the future of our cities, but who should decide what that future should be like and whose interest’s smart urbanism serves? The ‘Right to the City’ calls for citizens as ‘users’ of cities to be integral parts to the socio-technological processes that shape urban space. This article explores how citizens can participate meaningfully, and whether data protection rights can be instrumental to this objective. It does so by analysing several smart city projects in Belgium and the Netherlands that were affected by the GDPR. The findings illustrate that data protection impacts smart city developments, but meaningful influence of citizens, as in the Right to the City, remains very limited. The article argues that already dominant actors and decision-makers remain in control of ‘smart’ urban developments, while citizens often lack awareness and data literacy. We suggest that participatory methods for city-making are valuable if they bring about small, incremental changes and that researchers can play an active role in lowering barriers to meaningful participation in practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Smart city
• right to the city
• data protection
• participatory city-making
• material semiotics

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the regional science foundation of Flanders in Belgium as strategic basic research in the form of the four-year interdisciplinary research project SPECTRE (SBO project No. S006318N). More information and contact details can be found under spectreproject.be.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We decided to include two user involvement experts because their understanding of broader contexts complements our other research activities based on direct interactions with citizens in the form of two large-scale surveys and various workshops in 2021.

2 In privately owned spaces, like a restaurant, data may be legally processed for business interests and people can choose to not enter the space. In public space, one may not have this choice. The GDPR also provides different lawful bases for personal data processing, one of which is that of legitimate interest for businesses (ICO, 2021).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Flemish region in Belgium as strategic basic research in the form of the four-year interdisciplinary research project SPECTRE (SBO project No. S006318N, spectreproject.be/); Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek/FWO (https://www.fwo.be/nl/).

Notes on contributors

Jonas Breuer

Jonas Breuer is a PhD researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in Belgium and the research centre SMIT (Studies on Media, Innovation and Technology). Jonas’ PhD research focuses on the implementation of the GDPR and data projection impact assessments in cities as a means to involve all stakeholders in the making-smart of the city. New regulations and principles regarding privacy and data protection could be a powerful lever to address these tensions in the smart city. Most importantly, however, the aim of the research is to provide means to apply such laws, concepts and theories in practice, in the complex and often chaotic network that is the city.

Jo Pierson

Jo Pierson, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Media and Communication Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in Belgium and Principal Investigator at the research centre SMIT (Studies on Media, Innovation and Technology). In this position, he is in charge of the research unit ‘Data, Privacy & Empowerment’, in close cooperation with imec (Belgian/Flemish R&D and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technology). He holds the VUB Chair in ‘Data Protection on the Ground’, and is affiliated with Hasselt University and University of Amsterdam. His main research expertise is in digital platforms, algorithms, data privacy, user innovation and value-based design.