Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Citizen engagement is often considered essential to responsible innovation but criticized for lacking systemic effort. This study examines how citizen engagement initiatives may navigate systemic barriers in technology development by reflecting on attempts to organize citizen dialogue in Amsterdam’s smart city system. Specifically, we investigate the Digital Perimeter, a flagship innovation project to develop ‘ethical’ surveillance technologies for urban mobility and safety. Using a transformative action research approach, we worked with the Digital Perimeter team for 1.5 years to monitor and organize citizen dialogue. Our findings reveal (1) how institutional constraints in smart city projects converge to significantly hinder citizen dialogue, and (2) how organizing even imperfect dialogue can support fragile, initial institutional changes that may foster long-term openness to citizen perspectives. We end with reflections on how public engagement research might work productively with the messiness of dialogue in deficit-oriented environments to enable incremental yet systemic transformation.
Fraaije et al. (Thu,) studied this question.