Challenges and opportunities for equity in public management: Digital applications in multicultural Smart cities

ABSTRACT

The paper connects the literature on equity in public management with smart cities and explores the effects on the equity of digital projects in multicultural smart cities. We studied four ongoing digital projects in three large ethnically mixed cities in Israel (Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Haifa, Jerusalem). Our findings show that while all projects were designed to achieve certain benefits for residents, they are not equally accessible to all. Moreover, residents of all sectors were not actively involved in the processes of their design and implementation. We suggest embracing value co-creation, civilian discourse, and the implementation of structural mechanisms to effect change.

KEYWORDS:

• Equity
• smart cities
• digital
• cities
• multicultural

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our gratitude to each interviewee for their time and patience in contributing to this study. We want to thank Dr. Ronen Eidelman, our research assistant, for his work in gathering the information and data regarding the different projects and for his important contribution to the study. More so, we thank the financial support of the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Dr. Lahat would like to thank the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies, Concordia University, Montreal, for the time as a visiting scholar in 2022 that helped promote this version of the paper. Last, we thank the reviewers and the editors of this special issue for their valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

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

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2023.2258892

Notes

1. We focused on PM and PA literature on equity. However, another stream in the literature deals with equity from a governance perspective (e.g. Dobbin et al. 2022; Jos 2016).

2. The trade-off between efficiency and effectiveness is not a given. Rosenbloom claims equity is inherent in PA; others suggest social equity is more in line with procedural justice and less with distributional or relational justice and therefore needs specific attention (e.g. Svara and Brunet 2005; Stivers et al. 2023). We agree with the latter argument.

3. Including Israeli settlements outside Israel’s recognized borders (the ‘Green Line’).

4. Following Diab et al. (2022), we use the word Arab.

5. The findings are based on the integration of sources, but when we include an interviewee’s statement, we specify this in parentheses.

6. https://www2.haifa.muni.il/smartCity/story.aspx?id=13 (visited: 14 January 2022).

7. See: http://isha.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/תחושת-הבטחון-של-נשים-ומוסדות-המדינה-2013.pdf (visited: 29 January 2022).

8. https://abrahaminitiatives.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2021/08סקר-הבטחון-האישי-בערים-המעורבות-2020-גרסה-דיגיטלית.pdf (visited: 31 January 2022).

9. Ibid.

10. There are no available data on the share of orthodox Jews among Jerusalem’s service users.

11. A YouTube interview with Noga Myers, 17th October, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GrciSNSHeY.

12. https://www.decidim.barcelona.

13. https://decide.madrid.es. See also Pina et al. (2022).

14. See also the Office of Equity and Human Right, City of Portland, Oregon, 2016 Racial Equity Plan Manual in Gooden (2017); website for Decidim and Club de Madrid.

15. See, for example, Decidim - https://www.decidim.barcelona/processes/JocsPouFiguera/f/4949/meetings/5058; http://www.clubmadrid.org/sspguide

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.