a conversation between Coline Chevrin and Parisa Setayesh
Welcome to Dialogues, a new initiative within the HASTAC Scholars program designed to cultivate vibrant dialogue, foster meaningful interaction, and promote the cross-fertilization of ideas among our young scholars. These Dialogues are a way of recording the exchanges that happen when scholars from different/or similar disciplines discuss a shared topic. This is the first example of Dialogues that Parisa Setayesh and Coline Chevrin have written as a prototype for this initiative. Please comment and tell us what you think about it! this is an evolving process we have undertaken with the HASTAC Scholars and we look forward to hearing your feedback.
How we approached dialogues;
Coline: At first, I was going to write a few questions I wanted to ask Parisa, but I decided to write a bit about the origins of the activity. It felt like we had to start as a dialogue, asking one question at a time and seeing what the other answers to give the conversation a chance to truly unfold freely.
Parisa suggested at the beginning of the fall semester(Fall 2023) that we start brainstorming on a new activity for HASTAC Scholars, one that would be a bit more of a free format in order to try and generate spontaneous and deep interactions between the scholars. After presenting the idea during the HASTAC Scholars welcome event, it turns out that everyone was interested, even though because of the same free format that seemed so appealing, we didn’t know exactly how to start or how to set up clear guidelines. We arrived to the conclusion that maybe we should just start it by setting an antecedent of what it could look like or how it could be done since sometimes the most important part is just to start and keep going to see where the path takes us. We discussed it briefly, and I knew I wanted to discuss some urban themes with Parisa since we are both engaged in the same Geography program at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and both work – in very different ways – on urban topics. I suggested Smart Cities as the trigger for a conversation, and Parisa was immediately in! So please find below our free form cross-discussion. We hope you enjoy it!
Coline: Parisa, I am really excited to start this new activity, Dialogues, with you. It is even more inspiring that I feel like we have so many interesting conversations together. We always say we should write about it, but then we never make the time to do so. This is probably a very common frustration among PhD students, we move in such stimulating environments that we get a thousand ideas, but we actually have so many mandatory commitments that very few of these “free” ideas come to be something else. So I want to take this opportunity to discuss smart cities with you a bit. I am not sure why this topic came to my mind when I started thinking about Dialogues. Maybe because I root myself very much in critical urban geography, and I know your work is also urban? Maybe you can start by briefly introducing your research and explaining how the concept of smart cities comes at play with it.
Parisa: I am so happy to hear that you are excited about this too! I think a lot of the interesting ideas I have had have sparked from conversations with friends or even better arguments with friends. The idea behind developing this activity for the HASTAC Scholars is to take these conversations seriously. So, I would love to talk about Smart Cities with you. I work on climate adaptation and flood response, so specifically, I look at how coastal cities like NY and Rotterdam have responded and continue to respond to the increase in flooding risk by updating infrastructures. I deal with two categories of smart city technologies in this research.
Broadly speaking, Smart city technology refers to an integrated set of digital solutions, communications technologies, and information systems designed to improve the quality of life, operational efficiency, and urban services in a city. This encompasses the use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as sensors, lights, and meters that collect and analyze data to manage assets, resources, and services more effectively. Many resilience projects utilize these technologies to enhance, monitor, and manage resources, better engage with citizens, and improve the responsiveness of city services to meet the needs of their inhabitants. For Flood Risk management or flood resilience projects, these are flood sensors and early warning systems on one hand and city engagement technologies on the other. I know your work also deals with an urban context. Can you briefly explain your research and how smart cities come into your purview?
Coline: My work is pretty different from yours. I am working on the city of Rosario in Argentina. There are about 1.2 million inhabitants, and it is the country’s main hub for grain export. Around 75% of the grain production exits Argentina from Rosario’s ports, and grain export represents around 35% of the country’s exports, so it is a very central activity. With the commodity boom (particularly the soybean boom) in the early 2000s, the city started absorbing massive income from these exports and was restructured to facilitate speculation as a result. So, Rosario went through the most important real estate boom in the country, and inequalities started to increase drastically between the riverside and the center areas and more peripheral neighborhoods, where informal settlements and poverty kept growing. In parallel, it became a national hub for narcotraffic and is now the most violent city in the country. In my work, I look at three peripheral spaces where communities organize to resist displacement and enclosure. I am interested in how vulnerable places are sustained, and I look particularly at practices of solidarity and commoning – how do they come to be? So basically, I am very much looking at places that are not benefitting from smart city policies – these are territories where very few public services are guaranteed. Similarly, little data is collected or produced towards improving people’s quality of life. And yet, Rosario is considered one of the most advanced smart cities in Argentina – which led me to wonder what it means for a city of the Global South to be “smart” and who benefits from it. What would it mean for those excluded sectors I work with actually to be a part of the smart city?
This leads me to a question for you: In your research, how do you approach the role of citizens in the development and implementation of smart city projects?
Parisa: So, actually, locals play a pretty big role in the success of these projects; in the case of my research, integrating flood sensors and early warning systems in urban infrastructure is critical in enhancing urban resilience to flooding and a key aspect of climate adaptation strategies. Especially considering the importance of early warning systems, they are one of the most widely adopted ones; in NY, the FloodNET project is one such example. These systems embody the convergence of IoT technologies, data analytics, and community engagement to mitigate the impacts of flood events. So, the involvement of citizens in the development and implementation of these initiatives is pivotal for several reasons. First is the process of data collection and sharing; when citizens can actively contribute to data collection through community-based monitoring systems that complement traditional sensor networks or contribute to the shaping of these knowledge systems, the results are more meaningful to them and manage to address what the community would want to know so the community has a better connection to the information and is more willing to trust it, and rely on it for decision-making or feel more empowered to advocate for their interests utilizing the information. This participatory approach enriches the data pool with localized observations, improving the accuracy of flood forecasting and early warning systems. There are other benefits as well, like engaging citizens in smart city initiatives, raising public awareness about flood risks and the importance of early warning systems. Engaged and educated communities are more likely to respond effectively to warnings, reducing the potential for harm. It is also important to note that these systems create sustainable and strong feedback loops for system improvements; by reporting on their experiences and the effectiveness of early warning alerts, citizens help authorities and developers to identify areas for enhancement, also involving citizens in the development and implementation of flood response initiatives empowers communities, fostering a sense of ownership and responsibility. This active participation strengthens community resilience as people are more engaged in preparedness and mitigation activities.
Besides installing flood sensors, the platforms for community engagement play an important role in maximizing the influence of citizens in smart city initiatives. Like ensuring that digital platforms for data sharing and communication are accessible and easy to use encourages broader citizen participation and informing citizens about flood risks, the function of early warning systems, and how they can contribute to data collection and sharing boosts engagement and preparedness. These strategies help build networks of community volunteers who can act as liaisons between the public and policy practitioners or decision-makers and enhance trust and communication, leading to more effective dissemination of warnings and information. There is a lot of research that highlights the importance of integrating technical solutions with community engagement and suggests that decision support systems for flood early warning need a holistic approach combining meteorological predictions, simulation models, and citizen involvement for effective flood management. This research underscores the interconnectedness of technology, data, and community participation in creating resilient smart cities capable of confronting the challenges of urban flooding. Nevertheless, I don’t want to imply that this is only positive; there are a lot of concerns about the extractive qualities of smart city technologies, as well as concerns about privacy and other challenges in initiating and implementing smart city projects, can you speak to those in the context of Rosario?
Coline: It is interesting to me to see how, in your research, the participation of vulnerable communities is so central to the success of the project. To understand the importance of participating in smart city programs, people must feel that it will improve their daily lives. I think one key element is digital literacy. How do people understand data, how it is produced (and how they produce it themselves), how it is used, by whom, and for what purpose? This also raises the conditions of access: do people actually have access to the tools needed for data collection and their use? There is so much to explore in that sense. How do we create public data systems that are participative, useful for citizens, and foster digital literacy? I think these questions are very similar to most public policy challenges in the way that they really require us to look at territorial realities. What are communities’ needs on the field? What community systems already exist that we can build on? In the case of Rosario, a lot of the impulse regarding smart cities is to look towards the outside and reproduce some of their smart solutions. And yet, there are so many community mechanisms that already rely on digital tools and could become really interesting and innovative initiatives for a smart city. In one of the neighborhoods where I do my research, people share WhatsApp groups to circulate important information. For example, the little social and sports club I work with informs beneficiaries of the food they can retire from the community pantry. There is so much data produced there regarding the quantity and quality of food, the number of beneficiaries, and ways of managing stocks. It would be amazing to see more precisely what type of information could be systematized to become a part of the smart city project.
This brings me to the other thing linked to digital literacy, which is what happens to the data collected; how do we ensure the privacy of sensitive data? We know that enhancing a smart city project relies on open public data – however, data production can be very extractive. Indeed, a lot of the data produced relies on registering people’s daily moves and use of the city. How do we ensure the data produced is used to respond to the community’s needs and not towards more speculative activities? Transparency is also key regarding the use of the data and its accessibility. There is always a risk that it can be used against the most vulnerable. For example, I am thinking about data regarding land titles and cadastre. Many people in vulnerable neighborhoods do not possess the title of the land they inhabit, and there are extremely predatory practices of displacement by real estate developers and corrupt lawyers specializing in land markets. When making this kind of information public and accessible, how do we protect the people who are already in a vulnerable situation? What do you think are some of the future risks and potentials from your very different research context?
Parisa: Well, I want to address this specifically in the context of early flood warning systems, although I think many of these concerns would be relevant to other smart city technologies as well. So, generally, this mass integration of flood sensors and early warning systems within smart cities presents a spectrum of future potentials and risks shaped by technological advancements, policy decisions, and societal dynamics.
The big potential here is better protection from better predictions; with the evolution of AI and machine learning, flood prediction models can become more accurate, providing precise forecasts and enabling proactive measures. These technologies can analyze vast datasets from various sources, including satellites and IoT sensors, to predict flood events with greater spatial and temporal precision at a hyperlocal level. Secondly, flood sensors and early warning systems offer the potential for more integrated and adaptive urban planning. Cities can use data from these systems to inform infrastructure development, land use planning, and climate adaptation strategies, creating resilient urban spaces to flooding and other climate-related challenges. Citizen engagement and empowerment is also a strong possible potential, with the proliferation of mobile technologies and social media platforms, citizen engagement in flood monitoring and response can be enhanced. Crowdsourced data collection and sharing can empower communities, foster a culture of preparedness, and ensure rapid dissemination of information during emergencies. Finally, the possibility of cross-domain integration of city services could lead to more cohesive governance and resilient cities.
There are also significant risks in the collection and analysis of large volumes of data in terms of privacy and data security. Protecting personal information and safeguarding against cyber threats is critical to maintaining public trust in these systems. More importantly, the threat of a deepening digital divide could lead to a growing bias in the construction of environmental knowledge created about flood risk and can exacerbate existing inequalities. Communities with limited access to technology or digital literacy may find themselves at a disadvantage, this really highlights the need for inclusive approaches that ensure equitable access to information and resources. These systems will depend on many disparate devices, and reliability and accuracy are or will be challenging for their effectiveness. Malfunctions, false alarms, or inaccurate predictions can undermine public confidence in these technologies and potentially lead to complacency or disregard for future warnings. On the other hand, there is a risk that over-reliance on technological solutions could lead to complacency among citizens and policymakers, diminishing traditional knowledge and practices related to flood management and resilience.
Overall, I think a lot is riding on the conception, design, and implementation of these early models. It is necessary for these smart city projects to have a multifaceted approach that focuses on developing reliable, effective governance frameworks and inclusive technological design. I want to ask you a similar question: What do you think about future risks and potentials in the context of the global south, in a city like Rosario?
Coline: I already mentioned some of the risks, however, I would like to expand on the potentials a bit. In the Global South and, more generally, in underprivileged communities, we have seen amazing innovations regarding the uses of technology, with sometimes uses that are completely different from the “planned” ones. I think ensuring digital literacy and promoting the creation of digital solutions “from the ground” and by the communities is fundamental. We can’t expect experts in innovation or models imported from different contexts to solve most local issues. While some smart city initiatives can be replicated successfully, I think the key to great smart city projects is their situatedness. Do they actually consider the specific context and try to solve community issues by understanding power imbalances and trying to level up social and environmental justice? Or do they replicate existing inequalities through digital mechanisms? So, for me, finding innovative ways to involve the community and to encourage them to come up with data and digital solutions that are grounded, accessible, and that serve them is the more exciting part of thinking about smart cities.
Coline Chevrin and Parisa Setayesh
HASTAC Scholars Co-Directors