The Essay
Smart cities for all
Why inclusive smart cities are important for sustainable futures.
By Kuansong Victor ZHUANG, TAY Sze Hwee Jace, LEE Chei Sian, Gerard GOGGIN, WONG Meng Ee
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Disability inclusion is having its moment in the sun. Framed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, nation-states, institutions and corporates, among others, are embracing disability. Disabled people and their organisations are recognised as part of this broader reshaping of society. Amid this move towards the building of disability inclusive societies, we highlight the need to consider two key trends – sustainable futures and the development of smart cities.
We believe that for the future to be truly sustainable, we need our smart cities to be inclusive and for technology and design to centre disability. While sustainable futures have been a buzzword of late, much of the focus tends towards environmental and climate sustainability. These are no doubt important – but as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals highlight, other aspects, ranging from eradication of poverty, access to clean water and sanitation, equitable distribution and access to wealth, and importantly, the need to build inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities are just as crucial.
Sustainable futures are increasingly embraced within the proliferation of smart cities globally. Across Asia, policy makers, businesses, city governments and citizens are putting forth, adopting and embracing ambitious innovations to improve all aspects of life for those who live within them. India has proclaimed its ambition to build 100 smart cities, and cities like Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei and Kuala Lumpur are espousing these smart rhetorics. In these cities, technology is mobilised towards sustainable futures. They include the application of data towards mitigating common problems such as traffic congestion, sustainability measures such as environmental development and preservation and cleaner and more efficient energy uses, among others.
In these applications and imaginings, the smart city is both utopian and neoliberal in nature. These visions of the city are comparable to the likes of the American animated sitcom Jetsons (or Netflix’s Black Mirror) with all manner of science-fiction conveniences. With more and more of the world’s inhabitants projected to live in urban areas, smart cities are envisioned as the future we need to embrace.
A word of caution, nevertheless. The smart city must also be recognised as an excellent site of investment for neoliberal capital. When technology (and profit) is the focus of the smart city, those who do not have the means to engage with technology are pushed out from these spaces. If mobile phones and internet access are needed to make use of city services, those who are unable to afford mobile data plans or those unable to navigate the design structure of the websites are excluded. Driverless shuttles (think autonomous vehicles but also driverless metro systems) that are automated for speed may not afford enough time for a wheelchair user or those with mobility impairments, to get on or off. These are but a fraction of the problems that may plague the building and implementation of the smart city.
This is not new. Throughout human history, we see how the deployment of technology has created various affordances, but also problems, exclusions, segregations and inequalities. Smart cities are no different, but we believe that there is an opportunity in this present moment to shape and influence its development, especially as much of the technological imaginaries are still formative. Such a focus takes on greater imperative and relevance given disability’s more recent emergence, both as an identity group, but also as a positive form of embodiment and generative knowledge.
The university is a case in point showcasing the confluence of smart technologies and the need for inclusive and sustainable futures. As a site, the university is where many of us teach, study, learn and research. When the pandemic arrived, we were forced to transition to new modes of learning using technology. And while some of us transitioned seamlessly to what has been described as the “new normal”, we also found that technology can be disruptive and possess exclusionary logics. Problems range from fundamental issues such as basic access to the internet, to lack of captioning, as well as the inaccessible design of applications for online learning. Some of us found using remote teaching and learning experiences convenient and flexible, but also extremely isolating. The crisis of the pandemic reminds us that smart must design with disability in order to build truly inclusive and sustainable futures.
Beyond the university, there is an increasing array of technologies meant to enable, support and empower disabled people in the city. They range from city infrastructure such as smart traffic lights, driverless cars and beacons, to other more mundane technological aids, such as smart home devices, mobile applications and so on. In Singapore, as in many other cities, there are regular competitions and exhibitions that spotlight technologies proclaiming to support and enable disabled people. We applaud this enthusiasm towards shaping the city as a place for technology. However, we must be cautious not to pave over consideration of marginalised groups and how they live in and interact with these spaces, especially when these groups are seen as objects of welfare.
Truly smart inclusive cities are cities that involve disabled people in all stages of its implementation, from ideation, design, testing and implementation. Rather than to see disability as the concern of just the few, we need to recognise disability as central to the imaginings of human society. This is not rocket science – people with disabilities and their allies have called for their equal participation and representation for the last three decades. Designing with disability in the smart city, allows for more inclusive imaginings of our collective future. Only then can the future be truly sustainable.