Smart and sustainable technologies are often criticized for being too energy-, efficiency-, economics-, and/or technology-oriented. How is Smart City 3.0 attempting to better incorporate people and 'the social' into its framework? Can you think of examples in
your city that might be considered to be Smart City 3.0?
Prioritizing empowering the public and moving away from energy, efficiency, and technology toward broad objectives of democracy and equality are the main objectives of Smart City 3.0. Public consultation stresses citizen engagement in this phase, which views citizens as active actors in control. Metropolitan planner Rob Kitchin, for example, supports bottom-up, humanistic smart urbanism, in which citizens are not merely data points but leaders and decision-
makers, as opposed to top-down government. This concept encourages a more comprehensive strategy that addresses social issues that cannot be solved by technology or the free market.
Certain components of Smart City 3.0 have been implemented in several places, such as Barcelona. Barcelona has pushed for technical sovereignty, which favours open data and democratic regulation of digital platforms that serve the general welfare over the interests of private industry. In contrast to versions 1.0 and 2.0, this strategy demonstrates a dedication to humanistic principles in the development of smart and sustainable cities.
