[open-development] FW: Blogpost: Smart Cities vs. Smart Communities: Enabling Markets or Empowering Citizens

[michael gurstein]

http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/smart-cities-vs-smart-communities-e
nabling-markets-or-empowering-citizens/

 

Hmmm..

 

So "Smart Cities" particularly in Less Developed Countries are ways of
turning urban environments into gold mines for consultants, hardware and
software companies and redoing the city in the image and for the benefit of
its most prosperous and well-serviced inhabitants and in the meantime
transferring additional resources and benefits from the poor to the rich.

 

But another type of "Smart" program is possible-one that is focused on
social inclusion, enabling citizens, supporting communities-a community
informatics model.  This would be a smart program where the emphasis is on
"Smart Communities" rather than "Smart Cities" and enabling and empowering
citizens and supporting their individual and communal quests for well-being
rather than turning cities into a series of cascading neo-liberalized
markets-for services, for infrastructure, for shelter.

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