Participatory Action Research for the Development of E-Inclusive Smart Cities

Abstract

The growing emphasis on citizens and private and public stakeholders within smart cities demands approaches where these actors are seen as participants in the decision-making process with their own experiences, wants and needs for sustainable smart city strategies. Gaining insight into their experiences with technologies is essential for the successful deployment of inclusive smart city solutions. We propose PAR4P (Participatory Action Research for the development of Policies) as an approach to enhance collective participation from diverse stakeholders enabling the development of bottom-up and e-inclusive smart city policies. This paper provides a detailed description of the PAR4P approach and applies it to the development of an e-inclusive smart city masterplan for the Brussels-Capital Region.

Keywords:

• e-inclusion
• participation
• participatory action research
• policymaking
• quadruple helix
• smart cities

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge Innoviris, the Brussels Institute for Research and Innovation, for supporting the project and our respondents for participating. We are also grateful to Jan Waeben, our colleague, for editing and proofreading this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

Notes

1 Robert G. Hollands, “Will the real smart city please stand up?,” City 12, no. 3 (2008), 315.

2 Taylor Shelton & Thomas Lodato, “Actually existing smart citizens. Expertise and (non)participation in the making of the smart city,” City 23, no. 1 (2019), 40.

3 Mark Baldwin, “Participatory Action Research,” in The Sage Handbook of Social Work (London, UK: Sage Publications Ltd., 2012), 467; C. A. J. van Rooyen and M. M. A. Gray, “Participatory Research and its Compatibility to Social Work,” Social Work Practitioner-Researcher 8, no. 3 (1995), 89.

4 Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Ernesto Ganuza, Popular Democracy. The paradox of participation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017), 7; Carole Pateman, “Participatory Democracy Revisited,” Perspectives on Politics 10, no. 1 (2012), 14.

5 Nico Carpentier, “Beyond the ladder of participation: an analytical toolkit for the critical analysis of participatory media processes,” The Public 23, no. 1 (2016), 71.

6 Ibid., 72.

7 Sherry R. Arnstein, “A ladder of citizen participation,” Journal of the American Planning Association 35, no. 4 (1969), 217; Carpentier, “Beyond the ladder of participation,” 72; Baiocchi and Ganuza, Popular Democracy, 7.

8 Kathe Callahan, “Citizen Participation: Models and Methods,” International Journal of Public Administration 30, no. 11 (2007), 1179.

9 Nancy Roberts, “Public Deliberation in an Age of Direct Citizen Participation,” The American Review of Public Administration 34, no. 4 (2004), 316.

10 Renée A. Irvin and John Stansbury, “Citizen Participation in Decision Making: Is It Worth the Effort?,” Public Administration Review 64, no. 1 (2004), 58.

11 Callahan, “Citizen Participation: Models and Methods,” 1181; Roberts, “Public Deliberation,” 320.

12 Ibid., 320.

13 Irvin and Stansbury, “Citizen Participation in Decision,” 55.

14 Joris de Vente et al., “How does the context and design of participatory decision making processes affect their outcomes? Evidence from sustainable land management in global drylands,” Ecology and Society 21, no. 2 (2016), 6; Irvin & Stansbury, “Citizen Participation in Decision Making,” 58.

15 Irvin & Stansbury, “Citizen Participation in Decision Making,” 59.

16 Callahan, “Citizen Participation: Models and Methods,” 1183; de Vente et al., “How does the context and design of participatory decision making processes affect their outcomes?,” 10; Graham P. Martin, “Public and User Participation in Public Service Delivery: Tensions in Policy and Practice,” Sociology Compass 3, no. 2 (2009), 313–314; Hilary Silver, Alan Scott, and Yuri Kazepov, “Participation in Urban Contention and Deliberation,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 34, no. 3 (2010), 454; Baiocchi and Ganuza, Popular Democracy, 43–48.

17 Joan Font, Magdalena Wojcieszak, and Clemente J. Navarro, “Participation, Representation and Expertise: Citizen Preferences for Political Decision-Making Processes,” Political Studies 63, no. 1 (2015), 158.

18 Arnstein, “A ladder of citizen participation,” 217; Archon Fung, “Varieties of Participation in Complex Governance,” Public Administration Review 66, no. 1 (2006), 69; Laurie Skuba Jackson, “Contemporary Public Involvement: Toward a strategic approach,” Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability 6, no. 2 (2001), 145.

19 Margot Hurlbert and Joyeeta Gupta, “The split ladder of participation: A diagnostic, strategic, and evaluation tool to assess when participation is necessary,” Environmental Science & Policy 50, (2015), 104; Carpentier, “Beyond the ladder of participation,” 77.

20 Hurlbert and Gupta, “The split ladder of participation,” 101.

21 Baiocchi and Ganuza, Popular Democracy, 41–43.

22 Frank Fischer, “Participatory Governance as Deliberative Empowerment. The Cultural Politics of Discursive Space,” American Review of Public Administration 36, no. 1 (2006), 28.

23 Ank Michels and Laurens De Graaf, “Examining Citizen Participation: Local Participatory Policy Making and Democracy,” Local Government Studies 36, no. 4 (2010), 486.

24 Willemien Laenens, Ilse Mariën, and Wendy Van den Broeck, “Channel Choice Determinants of (Digital) Government Communication: A Case Study of Spatial Planning in Flanders,” Media and Communication 6, no. 4 (2018), 146.

25 Baiocchi and Ganuza, Popular Democracy, 41.

26 Ibid., 54.

27 Ibid., 42.

28 Katrien de Koster et al., Democratie en de Kloof Tussen Discours en Praktijk. Burgerparticipatie, Overheidsbeleid en Tevredenheid op het Lokale Niveau. (Ghent, Belgium: Academia Press, 2010), 62.

29 Thamy Pogrebinschi and Matt Ryan, “Moving beyond input legitimacy: When do democratic innovations affect policy making?,” European Journal of Political Research 57, no. 1 (2017), 15.

30 Roberts, “Public Deliberation in an Age of Direct Citizen Participation,” 341.

31 Ilse Mariën, Karen Donders, Anne-Sofie Vanhaeght, and Nils Walravens, “PAR4-P: een shift in beleidsvorming voor een menselijke digitale stad,” in De humane stad (Brussels, Belgium: Politeia, 2017), 221–222.

32 Baldwin, “Participatory Action Research,” 467; van Rooyen and Gray, “Participatory Research and its Compatibility,” 89; Fran Baum, Colin MacDougall, and Danielle Smith, “Participatory action research,” Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 60, no. 10 (2006), 854.

33 Gregory N. Hearn and Marcus Foth, “Action Research in the Design of New Media and ICT Systems,” in Topical Issues in Communications and Media Research (New York, USA: Nova Science, 2005), 80.

34 Maggie Walter, “Participatory Action Research. Social Research Methods,” in Social Research Methods (Londen, UK: The Falmer Press, 2009), 152.

35 Henrik Friberg-Fernros and Johan Karlsson Schaffer, “The Consensus Paradox: Does Deliberative Agreement Impede Rational Discourse?,” Political Studies 62, no. 1 (2014), 105.

36 Paul Conolly, Ethical Principles for Researching Vulnerable Groups (Belfast, Ireland: Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, 2003), 9–18.

37 Mark Shepard and Antonina Simeti, “What’s So Smart About the Smart Citizen?,” in Smart Citizens, ed. Drew Hemment and Anthony Townsend (Manchester, UK: FutureEverything, 2013), 14.

38 Hollands, “Will the real smart city please stand up?,” 316.

39 Paolo Neirotti et al., “Current trends in Smart City Initiatives: Some Stylised Facts,” Cities 38, (2014), 28.

40 Baiocchi and Ganuza, Popular Democracy, 43–48.

41 Mariën, Donders, Vanhaeght, and Walravens, “PAR4-P: een shift,” 221–222.

42 Shelton and Lodato, “Actually existing smart citizens,” 37.

43 Hollands, “Will the real smart city please stand up?,” 316.

44 Roberts, “Public Deliberation,” 341.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Anticipate program of Innoviris [lnnoviris/2017-PRFB-42/KM/MV/JL/SK/ms/2017/2040].

Notes on contributors

Willemien Laenens

Willemien Laenens is a researcher at imec-SMIT-Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium. Her main topics of interest are digital inequalities, digital inclusion, and smart cities. Her current research project, PAR4-B, focuses on the development of an e-inclusive Smart City masterplan for Brussels by bringing together several stakeholder groups, including vulnerable social groups. She has a bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design from Sint-Lukas Brussel (Belgium) and holds a master’s degree in Communication Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium).

Ilse Mariën

Ilse Mariën is a post-doc researcher at imec-SMIT-Vrije Universiteit Brussel where she is leading several policy-oriented projects related to digital inequalities, e-skills, and e-inclusion. At imec-SMIT she has been leading the development of the PAR4P-methodology that focuses on multi-stakeholder consultation for policy and strategy development. Ilse has tested and implemented the PAR4P-method in a number of policy projects commissioned by regional, national and European governmental bodies, such as the PAR4-B project (2018–2022) that consists of developing an e-inclusive smart city policy for Brussels by way of an iterative participatory and action-oriented research process.

Nils Walravens

Nils Walravens is a senior researcher at imec-SMIT-Vrije Universiteit Brussel with a doctoral degree in Communication Sciences from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel on the topic of Smart Cities, identifying strategies for cities looking to create public value through mobile applications. He has worked on a large number of local and international projects related to business models in the media and public sector, as well as open data. As of January 2017, Nils coordinates the Smart Flanders program, which supports the 13 center cities of Flanders and the Flemish Community Commission in Brussels with opening up real-time data related to urban challenges.