“Human-Centric” (“Human-Sized”) Turn in the Evolution of the “Smart City” Concept and the Participation of Civil Society Actors in Political Decision-Making

Abstract

The paper analyzes the main causes and outlines of a human-sized turn in the evolution of the concept of smart cities, one of the characteristic features of which is the transition from centralized approaches (“top-down”) in political decision-making to approaches that involve community participation, diffuse interaction and orientation towards joint decisions, consideration of citizens not only as voters, but rather as equal subjects, partners of the government, the use of whose potential in making political decisions ensures the effectiveness and “human dimension” of the latter. The “human dimension” turn leads to the conceptualization of smart cities through categories such as “happiness”, “well-being”, “collaboration”, “inclusion”. There is a shift in emphasis from explicit knowledge to the so-called. Implicit knowledge, i. e. knowledge of citizens. At the same time, the paper highlights the existing gap (and in many respects the declarative nature of the goals of smart cities) between the ideal human-centric and “human-sized” model of smart cities and the existing real decision-making practice, which the researchers pay attention to. The paper concludes that a promising direction in the study of smart city in this context is the study and search for effective forms of participation of civil society actors in decision-making, mechanisms for ensuring inclusive and transparent participation of citizens, ways to achieve meaningful civic participation and adjust decisions through real “exchange” of knowledge, modern smart city models that consider the participation of civil society actors as a key part of the decision-making process.

Keywords

• smart city
• human-centeredness
• civil society actors
• city as a platform
• participation
• the concept of “redistribution of power”
• political decision-making