What could go possibly wrong with two of the most repressive regimes in the MENA region collecting a staggering amount of data? Here are just a few of the threats people face:

• Mass collection and processing of personal data
  
• Chilling effects and threats to free will — modification of our behavior
  
• Threats to people’s lives and livelihoods
  
• Threats to cybersecurity

There’s no reason to accept ubiquitous surveillance as the norm, in the MENA region or anywhere else!

The Global Observatory of Urban AI, the CC4DR’s initiative to guide the ethical implementation of AI in cities, is currently building a repository of AI Projects from cities all around the world, that will be made available for consultation via an online ATLAS. This crowdsourced repository of projects aims to recognise the efforts of automatisation and digitalisation in cities, and become a focus point for researchers, local policymakers, and the public interested in AI.

We are currently gathering the projects that will feed the Atlas, and that is why we would like to ask you to fill this form with your local projects. It will only take you 10 minutes to complete the form (please, fill one form for each project), and your project will be displayed in an online ATLAS alongside other cities’ projects that are implementing AI in a principled and rights-based way.

Eurocities is the network of more than 200 cities in 38 countries, representing 130 million people. Here is a story on a project from Finland with MyData.

Personal data is a key building block for innovative smart city services. However, as seen in cases like the Sidewalk Labs’ effort in Toronto, concerns about governance and unclear usage of personal data can create pushback from the public and erode trust. In response, cities around the world are adopting approaches to personal data management that put people in control of their data. This human-centric approach both protects and empowers residents, whilst encouraging the growth of data-driven services.

Seoul says it will be the first major city government to enter the metaverse. On Nov. 3, the South Korean capital announced a plan to make a variety of public services and cultural events available in the metaverse, an immersive internet that relies on virtual reality. If the plan is successful, Seoul residents can visit a virtual city hall to do everything from touring a historic site to filing a civil complaint by donning virtual reality goggles.

On the face of it, the smart city market is bleeding. In May 2020, Alphabet pulled the plug on Sidewalk Toronto, the company’s ambitious smart city project in Canada. One year later, the company scrapped two other smart city projects in Portland, Oregon, and Kansas City. While the trend of large-scale smart city projects seems to be waning, the markets for smart technology, including AI, facial recognition and the Internet of Things (IoT), are rapidly growing and attracting customers from the public sector.

This people centered smart cities initiatives and solutions compendium is developed to support the UN-Habitat’s flagship programme on “People-Centered Smart Cities”. It is a collection of innovative solutions (tools, mobile applications, digital platforms, reports, trainings, guidelines, etc.) that contribute to improving quality of life in cities and regions. These are solutions developed around the world at the national and local levels by government agencies, international institutions, NGOs, research institutions, private companies, etc.

FinEst Centre for Smart Cities is an Estonian-Finnish collaboration and MyData was part of a 2020 challenge. It has now been shortlisted as one of five project to move forward: Citizen Data Roaming.

While the world still struggles against the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments and organisations are discussing how new technologies can be exploited to relieve its impacts and how future pandemics can be avoided or minimised. Among the envisioned solutions, the development of more efficient and widespread smart city initiatives can improve the way critical data is retrieved, processed, stored, and disseminated, potentially improving the detection and mitigation of outbreaks while reducing the execution time when taking critical actions.

The Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) has issued recommendations regarding the development of ‘smart city applications’. The recommendations are intended for municipalities which collect or intend to collect data in public spaces using smart sensors and measuring devices.

2020-21 “Smart City” Cautionary Trends & 10 Calls to Action to Protect and Promote Democracy.

Telecommunications company Orange has partnered with Polish blockchain company Smartkey to improve access controls to buildings and city services across Poland. Several city governments already use Orange’s IoT platform to remotely manage city services such as street lighting control. The partnership builds upon this technology by integrating Smartkey’s blockchain solution, which ensures that the data from the IoT sensors cannot be falsified after its creation. When combined, the two platforms will enable authorized city residents to gain quicker access to specific buildings and city and commercial services. Eighty cities will participate in the initial rollout.

Join the Fing Data Day and explore the strategic opportunities to co-design data projects between cities. To help you prepare to take part in the discussion, we drafted this extensive participant handbook.

In 2020, Helsinki was ranked the world’s second smartest city, after Singapore, and won a top design prize for creating a “digital twin” or a computer model of the newly built neighborhood Kalasatama, in central Helsinki. So what makes Helsinki “smart”?

To protect and uphold digital rights at the local and global level

The City of Helsinki has adopted MyData principles as it attempts to become the most functional digital city on the planet through proactive digital services.

Joanna van der Merwe and Hannah wrote a blogpost about the main insights gathered from their session at the MyData Online 2020 Conference: Risks, challenges and solutions for data-driven public-private partnerships.

In this call 16 national research and innovation funding agencies have earmarked a global budget of about 18.4 M€, in order to support transnational R&I projects. A broad range of research and innovation projects are invited to enable capacity building for urban transformations around three main topics, which address a wide variety of urban challenges:

• Topic 1: Urban circular economies
  
• Topic 2: Community-based developments and urban innovation ecosystems
  
• Topic 3: Robust and resilient urban infrastructure and built environment
  

A new approach to data sharing outlined by the European Commission (EC) last week could accelerate smart city initiatives. Potential benefits include more advanced solutions to climate change, health and mobility challenges; better ability to port innovation between cities; and new personalised services for residents.

Taltech has opened an idea competition to find research-based solutions targeting urban challenges of local governments. The best ideas will be implemented by them as large-scale pilots together with at least two cities (one has to be from Estonia). One pilot can be allocated with up to 1.5 million euros, the total budget of the challenge is 15 million euros over the next 7 years (first ones funded by the European Regional Fund and the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research).

Social media has made it possible to manipulate the masses via disinformation and fake news at an unprecedented scale. This is particularly alarming from a security perspective, as humans have proven to be one of the weakest links when protecting critical infrastructure in general, and the power grid in particular.

The objective of Helsinki is to enhance the utilisation of data and analytics, in order to be able to produce individual and tailored services for the residents.

The Ministry of Finance has granted Helsinki, Espoo, Turku and Oulu slightly over EUR 2 million as funding for MyData projects. Espoo’s share of the funding is EUR 150,000. The aim is to improve the cities’ technical capabilities, enabling them to use residents’ data while ensuring the protection of individuals and data security. Residents’ data refers to data that is collected from the residents through the city’s systems as the residents use the city’s services.

The People-first vision is a new perspective to how cities can govern and benefit from digital technologies in the global urban age, by developing people’s rights and technologies in harmony.

Why technology is not an end in itself, and how cities can be “smart enough,” using technology to promote democracy and equity.

Declaration on joining forces to boost sustainable digital transformation in cities and communities in the EU: We, decision makers at all levels of government together with organisations and networks of cities and communities of all sizes1, believe that strong cooperation through multi-level governance in the EU and co-creation with citizens are key to our mission of turning our cities and communities into smart and sustainable places where people enjoy living and working.

The question is not whether a human-centric smart city can be built. The question is whether the citizen will be put at the center of their own data to make a wise city.

This article examines the evolution of the ‘Barcelona Model’ of urban transformation through the lenses of worlding and provincialising urbanism. We trace this evolution from an especially dogmatic worlding vision of the smart city, under a centre-right city council, to its radical repurposing under the auspices of a municipal government led, after May 2015, by the citizens’ platform Barcelona en Comú.

“Toronto Sidewalk Labs mini-version” in NYC: The country’s largest development has officially arrived, but so too has the debate over Related’s plans for user data.

Google's sister company Sidewalk is proposing a large urban development project in Toronto - without any prior development experience. Privacy, privatization and governance concerns are worrying residents and government alike, despite a massive two-year lobbying campaign by Google. Ambiguous language in the proposal suggests that public spaces may not be so public, and that some of the most valuable land in North America may be handed over at a discount to one of the world's richest companies.

You should check with the people of https://oascities.org/ and the Synchronicity project. I think they've done a lot of research and gained a lot of experience on data collection in the public domain and making sure it is inline with the European GDPR regulation on privacy.

OpenNorth is currently leading a research project that is undertaking research on behalf of the City of Toronto, in the context of its increasing use of data and 'smart city' technologies in service delivery as well as outside proposals for future projects, including the Quayside project of Waterfront Toronto, working with Sidewalk Labs. We would appreciate your help in finding useful and informative case studies of data governance models from around the world.