Abstract
In this paper, we propose that a smart approach to city development must seek a continuous and recursive interplay between two levels of codes. On the one hand, computer codes, which rule the development and the functioning of the ubiquitous ICTs infrastructure. On the other hand, normative codes, which govern the practices through which social actors perceive ICTs and decide to exploit them in order to improve their lives. We thus take an exploratory standpoint and investigate to what extent key players in the EU smart cities policy domain are framed according to such a sociotechnical perspective. To this purpose, we first map an online issue network on the topic of smart cities in Europe and then explore the frames that circulate within its core. Our results suggest that, although smart cities are framed sociotechnically, EU key players tend to better converge around technological aspects rather than social ones.
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Notes
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https://eu-smartcities.eu/about/useful_links. Starting points are available in Appendix A.1.
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The final list of websites included in the online issue network is available in Appendix A.2.
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The third .com node is Twitter.com. The platform appears as a node on its own although webpages crawled by the Issue Crawler link to a specific account within it because of the overall incapability of the software to process deep links within social media platforms.
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Nodes in the network core are ec.europa.eu, klimabuendnis.org, eumayors.eu, covenantofmayors.eu, eea.europa.eu, iclei-europe.org, iclei.org, eurocities.eu, buildup.eu, eltis.org, eib.org, mobilityweek.eu, mayors-adapt.eu, managenergy.net, fedarene.org, energy-cities.eu, climatealliance.org, ccre.org, soglasheniemerov.eu, euroace.org.
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We base this section on the definitions given by [21] in Sects. 2.3.1 to 2.3.3.
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In each affiliation matrix, there is a tie between any couple of key players if they shared a frame in a number of webpages higher than the average number of pages where any socio-centered or techno-centered frames could be found.
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A Appendix
A Appendix
1.1 A.1 List of Starting Points submitted to Issue Crawler
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1.2 A.2 List of Websites Included in the Final Online Issue Network
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Pavan, E., Diani, M. (2016). Making Computer and Normative Codes Converge: A Sociotechnical Approach to Smart Cities. In: Bagnoli, F., et al. Internet Science. INSCI 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9934. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45982-0_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45982-0_23
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