Drawing from communication infrastructure theory, I propose a methodological and analytical intervention for the smart city and related initiatives: a community-driven approach to urban data-driven governance. This approach contends that data-related actors increasingly act as key storytelling agents within urban governance, given the rise of datafication. Moreover, it emphasizes the importance of an alternative storytelling network, positing the local storytelling network as a key—yet often minimally visible—set of experts and storytellers that can activate data-driven change and overcome extant gaps in dominant, “limited” versions of the smart city. As such, I spotlight two counterdata projects as prototypes for this intervention. In all, I argue it is imperative that urban governance explores this framework to incorporate, and design with, a wider range of local actors and knowledge in mind: not only to address critiques but, more so, to build more inclusive models in the public interest.
Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (2018) AEMP handbook by the anti-eviction mapping project (AEMP). In: Capous-DesyllasMMorgaineK (eds) Creating Social Change Through Creativity: Anti-Oppressive Arts-Based Research Methodologies. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, pp.289–308. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52129-9_16.
2.
Ball-RokeachSJKimYCMateiS (2001) Storytelling neighborhood: Paths to belonging in diverse urban environments. Communication Research28(4): 392–428.
3.
BaykurtBRaetzschC (2020) What smartness does in the smart city: From visions to policy. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies26(4): 775–789.
4.
BenjaminR (2019) Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
BuiMWylieB (2024) Counterpublics. In: BurrellJSinghRDavisonP (eds) Keywords of the Datafied State. New York, NY: Data & Society Research Institute, pp.155–169. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4734250 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4734250.
7.
D’IgnazioCKleinLF (2020) Data Feminism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
8.
EubanksV (2018) Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police and Punish the Poor. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
9.
FlensburgSLomborgS (2023) Datafication research: Mapping the field for a future agenda. New Media & Society25(6): 1451–1469.
KitchinR (2016) The ethics of smart cities and urban science. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences374(2083): 1–16. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2016.0115.
19.
LoukissasYA (2019) All Data are Local: Thinking Critically in a Data-driven Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
20.
MatternS (2020) A city is not a computer. In: The Routledge Companion to Smart Cities. Chicago: Routledge, pp.17–28.
OgnyanovaKChenNNBall-RokeachSJ, et al. (2013) Online participation in a community context: Civic engagement and connections to local communication resources. International Journal of Communication7: 2433–2456. Available at: www.ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/2287.
