How we know where we are in the smart city: Excerpts from conversations in Amsterdam (Netherlands)

In smart cities data from and about residents is captured in high volumes and through a variety of channels and devices. Some of these devices are part of the built environment, such as CCTV cameras or wireless sensors, capturing data as we pass by them. Other data flows within the digital sphere through our use of social media or text messages, for instance. How these data become combined and used, and by whom, is mostly unknown to the individuals who are both producers and users of digital data. This raises many questions about the social and spatial ordering of the city and its people. Spatial references of our past or current locations, places of residence and work, our movements through the city are deeply embedded into the data streams and databases of the smart city. Through integration of data from various sources, much can be known about our movements as well as social associations within physical space. At the same time, the spaces that we experience and live in increasingly take their shape across the digital and physical realms of life. In focus groups in 2015 in Amsterdam we discussed with citizen groups how they perceive of, enact and articulate the types of spaces and spatial references that emerge through diverse digital data flows. Through the analysis we are especially interested to understand how these articulations of digital and physical spaces interlink; and how the notions of public and private space may shift or intertwine in the processes that characterize smart urbanism from the perspective of citizens. The research represents some of the first empirical work exploring the emotional connections of residents to their digital city.