Shaping the Future City - Ethical Considerations of Implementation of Technology in Urban Design

Abstract: Reliable data is the strongest driving force of the modern Smart City. To get access to relevant information that will allow building a long-term management policy, the city is filled with sensors and video cameras connected to a high-speed data transmission infrastructure. Today, even the inhabitants themselves are turning into sources of information: users' mobile devices - there are 7.7 billion registered mobile subscribers in the world - produce terabyte streams of data about the location, purchases and interests of individuals in real time. The city management system gets a chance to become truly human-centered. The fact that smart cities depend on tracking and analyzing vast amounts of previously untapped data on the movements and activities of urban populations means that, as attractive as smart city visions may be, they remain largely utopian and can quickly become dystopian in practice. The benefits of smart cities have been praised, loud and clear. But the truth is that the introduction of fully integrated data-driven technologies into urban infrastructure and governance poses a serious threat to human rights. Therefore, smart city developers regularly face a number of ethical issues. Based on the analysis of H22 project of city of Helsingborg and digitalization policy of Copenhagen, this research aims at revealing the issues, and providing possible solutions for a number of them within a theoretical framework, that considers surveillance capitalism, implications of big data, and citizen involvement.