In this open issue of the Journal of Urban Technology, we have a diverse collection of articles dealing with both familiar (technology transfer, online neighborhood networks) and unfamiliar (using blockchain technology to protect the Intellectual Property rights of street artists) issues.
In the first of these articles, “Uncertainty in Market-Mediated Technology Transfer and Geographical Diffusion: Evidence from Chinese Technology Flow,” Dongho Han and Ilwon Seo attempt to tackle market-mediated technology transfer within and across geographies drawing upon patent licensing records in China. The data set they use allows them to capture the importance of geography in licensing relationships—an important new insight. Their discussion leads them into teasing out the implications for public actors within innovations systems (such as those outlined in the Triple Helix model); investigating the policy implications of purchasers/providers preferring differing spatial scales; and displaying how geographic proximity is revealed as a means of risk aversion. The authors see three advantages of using patent licensing data in a Chinese context to track region-to-region technology flows. First, patent licensing data “indicate the flow of technology with economic value geared toward innovative outcomes.” Second, the licensing data set portrays “region-to-region technology flows.” And third, a licensing contract “reflects an organization’s strategic decisions.” The analysis of these data allowed the authors to conclude that “despite the presence of market mechanisms, geographical proximity still plays an important role in the diffusion of knowledge, similar to that of pure knowledge spillover.” However, they noted that in the regions of China that they studied, Han and Seo found that “geographical agglomeration is an essential, but not a sufficient condition” to trigger economic growth.
While not studied as much as seems warranted, noise pollution and how to ameliorate it are important issues in city planning. In their article, “Stakeholders Engagement in Noise Action Planning Mediated by OGITO: An Open Geo-Spatial Interactive TOol,” Rosa Aguilar, Johannes Flacke, Daniel Simon, and Karin Pfeffer describe the development of a digital tool that facilitates stakeholder engagement and public discourse in the context of noise action planning. The focus of the article is on how maptables can be used in collaborative spatial planning. The researchers used collaboration to develop a tool that was able to allow stakeholders to identify specific locations and populations that were exposed to higher levels of noise with the goal of planning abatement strategies. Because of the pandemic, the stakeholders participated sometimes remotely in these sessions and sometimes in person. The success of the remote sessions will be used in the future to involve members of the affected communities who can only participate remotely.
The goal of the study written by Jonas De Meulenaere, Cédric Courtois, Michel Walrave, Lieven J.R. Pauwels, Wim Hardyns, and Koen Ponnet has a clearly defined goal: to determine the prevalence of the use of online neighborhood networks (ONNs) and explore which socio-demographic, socioeconomic status, social integration, and media use determinants predict ONN membership and use in the city of Ghent, Belgium. Their article, “Exploring the User Base of Online Neighborhood Networks: Determinants of Online Neighborhood Network Membership and Uses” concludes that, among other things and in contrast to prior research, ONNs are the local online territory of residents of lower socioeconomic status and to them, these networks are a means of connecting with and capitalizing on neighborhood connections.
The European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities Six Nations Forum (EIP-SCC 6N) was established to develop a common approach to smart urban transformation, intended to enable smart technologies to enter the international market, and place European cities at the center of innovation. In their article, “A Common Management Framework for European Smart Cities? The Case of the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities Six Nations Forum,” Rachel Macrorie, Simon Marvin, Adrian Smith, and Aidan While identify four challenges that international industry standards organizations and their proponents are motivated to address in attempts to formulate, translate, and accelerate a common approach to smart city management. Their article identifies these challenges—complexity, incompatibility, customization, and fragmentation—and explains how the EIP-SCC6N Forum created a Blueprint, attempting to address them. This article highlights the difficulties the Forum encountered in optimizing the city as a rational, stabilized, and digitally enabled system.
The issue’s final piece focuses on the nexus between urban space, public art, and technology. In their article, “Protecting Street Art Rights Using an NFT-Based System,” Eynat Mendelson-Shwartz, Ofir Shwartz, and Nir Mualam propose using blockchain technology to link the creator of a street artwork to the piece itself, protecting the artist’s intellectual property rights, while in many cases, keeping the artist’s anonymity. The issues facing the protection of an artist’s property rights are quite complex and are different from city to city, from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. For instance, artists do not generally own the physical artwork they may have created on a sidewalk or on the wall of a building. But they might possess intangible (intellectual property) rights. The authors have developed an elaborate process and technology through which the art can be memorialized, and the intellectual rights protected—"through the use of a Street-Art-NFT-system, a bitcoin-based dynamic street art ledger that would enable artists to assert their Intellectual Property rights and communicate with other interested parties, while maintaining their anonymity.” While this system does not yet exist, the authors have fully explained how it could be created and how it could be operated.