The Digital City as a Space for Political Identity: Digital Procedures and Practices of Civic Interaction

The article examines the digital city from the perspective of political philosophy, focusing on how administrative digital procedures and everyday practices shape residents’ political self-understanding. It develops a procedural model explaining the conditions under which interaction with municipal services strengthens or weakens a person’s status as an equal participant in a political community. The research methodology combines conceptual analysis, normative-institutional analysis of the complete user journey, and critical analysis of the institutional and regulatory effects of sociotechnical systems. The theoretical framework draws on studies on identity and urban place attachment, the public sphere, participatory parity and the right to the city, digital citizenship, data justice, digital administrative burdens, and inclusion in electronic public services, as well as normative instruments concerning data protection and access to information. The article distinguishes urban place attachment, urban identity, administrative identification, and political identity. The proposed model comprises five interrelated stages: access to services and institutional recognition; the transformation of a private need into a public claim; obtaining a reasoned response; appeal and review; and participation in revising common rules. The analysis shows that the political significance of a digital procedure lies not in the number of functions it offers or the speed of service delivery, but in the relationship between residents and public authority that it institutionalizes. Three criteria of democratic quality are substantiated: equality of political status, public justification of decisions, and a genuine possibility of contestation and review. The article’s theoretical contribution lies in connecting a political-philosophical account of identity with analysis of the complete digital user journey and in explaining political agency through repeated experiences of recognition, accountability, and effective voice. The model may be used for the normative assessment of municipal digital procedures in the fields of public claims, education, safety, and civic participation.