Sustainable Urbanisation in the Smart City

: Right to the City 2.0

Samenvatting

The 21st century is “the urban century”. Urban populations will grow, as will the significance of cities in the globalised world. On the one hand to face challenges which arise from these facts, on the other hand due to market logics and the ever increasing capacities of technology, further development and proliferation of Smart Cities seems to be inevitable today. Smart city is regarded here as both the application of various technologies amounting to an environment of networked information, and a framework enabling citizens to collaborate, participate, and to shape their environment according to their need. This study adopts and adapts Lefebvre’s notion of Right to the City as leitmotif, in order to assess the impact of Smart City on urbanism. Since urbanisation and technology are both subject to market logics, it is analysed whether the application of technology can provide the mechanism for reinvesting control in the people. A business-modelling approach - originating in the non-hierarchical complexity of the Internet - is utilised, due to its capacity for assessing control and value related issues within multi-actor ecosystem, as is the city. By employing multiple examples of how actors contribute to positive adjustments of power-relations, the business modelling exercise aims at establishing whether the Smart City can serve as more than business-opportunities, namely as the possibility for citizens to establish their Right to the City.

Datum prijs	2013
Originele taal	English
Begeleider	Shenja Van Der Graaf (Promotor) & Nils Walravens (Promotor)