Smart Cities: Missing the Stigmergy? (original) (raw)
The concept of "Smart cities" has been criticized for imprecise and inconsistent definitions across disciplines, potential hidden agendas of power and control, and a failure to address important social aspects of cities. Here we consider a more fundamental question of centralization versus distribution of city information, and in particular the information within the city and not only about the city-a distinction we draw by applying the concept of stigmergy. After conducting a brief examination of the deeper philosophical issues of information and city structure, we consider how the application of information within the city is a mostly distributed process that can be centralized only in limited ways. The model of stigmergy illustrates how such a process of local interactions can occur between actors within the city, and between them and the evolving forms of the city itself. Evidence suggests that this self-organizing and emergent process plays an essential role in a city's ability to satisfy multiple interests of city residents over time. An effective Smart city strategy will need to engage and support this capacity. We conclude with potential application as well as opportunities for further research. Keywords Smart cities • Stigmergy • Information theory • Symmetry • Actor network theory 8.1 Introduction The Smart city concept has not been without significant controversy, and among the criticisms are charges of vagueness, ambiguity and incompleteness. For example, Hollands (2008) concludes that the term lacks "definitional precision" exacerbated by an "underlying self-congratulatory tendency". Cavada et al. (2014) observe that the term suffers from "contradicting definitions and unclear measures", and "lacks a robust coherent definition". Caruso et al. (2020) argue that the Smart city is a "messy concept" that does not "disentangle the local specificities". Willis (2020) takes the
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