Open AccessTHE BEHAVIOURS AND JOB POSITIONS OF CITIZENS IN SMART CITIES’ DEVELOPMENT
Author(s) -
Seng Boon Lim,
Jalaluddin Abdul Malek,
Mohd Yusof Hussain,
Zurinah Tahir
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
planning malaysia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.232
H-Index - 7
eISSN - 1675-6215
pISSN - 0128-0945
DOI - 10.21837/pm.v17i10.635
Subject(s) - possession (linguistics) , smart city , government (linguistics) , business , public relations , power (physics) , local government , marketing , internet privacy , public administration , political science , internet of things , computer science , philosophy , linguistics , physics , quantum mechanics
Of the three major actors in smart cities, citizens have the most ambiguous roles, unlike the government which is the clear decision-maker, and the private technological players which are obviously supposed to provide state-of-the-art technologies to smart cities. Evidently, the possession of ambiguous characteristics or vague roles can result in the manipulation and subjugation of the general public by the power-holders. Thus, the objective of this paper is toidentify the desirable characteristics – including the behaviours and job positions – of the citizens who participate in the development of smart cities. Following the conduction of semi-structured interviews on the stakeholders of smart cities, it was found that citizens can actually be (1) active and independent volunteers in public life, (2) local champions or co-producers of public values, as well as (3) aware and educated-intention human sensors who drive changes, instead of being passive users of data or beneficiaries of services. It has been argued that the creation of smart cities is reliant on a deeper understanding of the citizens’ characteristics, apart from the implementation of policies which generate aware and civic-minded citizens.