About
This is the first online, open-access educational program on smart cities from a social sciences perspective. It is directed mainly to city officials and practitioners, but it can be of interest also for researchers, students, and citizens who want to know more about smart cities and their social implications.
Motivated by our conversations with city officials and based on our interviews with world-leading researchers, we offer an overview of the current debates on smart cities taking place in the social sciences.
The core questions of the programme are: What are the democratic, ethical, social justice challenges of current forms of corporate-based definitions of smart cities? How can technologies contribute to making cities more socially progressive and emancipatory?
Smart Cities for City Officials has a focus in Nordic European countries, but the program contents are free and open to anybody interested in smart cities.
Our aim
Social science research on the ways smart cities change our societies has been growing exponentially. Yet, this knowledge rarely circulates beyond academic circles, and hardly reaches out to practitioners at municipalities and other public authorities. The purpose of Smart Cities for City Officials is to start bridging that gap by providing a platform to foster conversations between social scientists and practitioners. We don’t have the pretense to answer all the big questions of smart cities, and neither to offer easily applied solutions. Our aim is that the conversations in this programme will serve as food for thought that will inspire the daily work of smart city officials and practitioners.
Contents
Smart Cities for City Officials is organised in eight online modules featuring video lectures, audio-lectures and written materials. It is designed for individual learning and to be self-paced.
The online contents can be complemented with two live events: an online workshop and a panel debate in the Conference- Beyond Smart Cities Today: Power Justice and Resistance (15-17 June 2022) .