TY  - CHAP
AB  - Abstract Over the last decade, engineers, designers, community organizers, and government employees have rallied around “civic tech.” What exactly does this term mean for urban technologists and “smart cities”? In formulating a definition, after describing the relationship of this term to the city, I examine how civic tech has been defined by practitioners. They have typically defined civic tech using umbrella definitions based on broad values and bucket definitions based on technologies. Although helpful, these definitions tend to obfuscate the political nature of civic tech’s practices and organizational techniques. In response, I suggest civic tech is a form of “technical pluralism” – iterative technology design and implementation among organized actors working toward predominantly administrative reforms. Because practitioners are inspired by redesigning systems of governance and redistributing power, civic tech’s most important provocations are organizational and political, rather than purely technological. Civic tech, as a form of technical pluralism, presents a route to bridging community and government in the pursuit of more equitable ways to achieve sustainable technology design in urban contexts.
SN  - 978-1-78769-140-7, 978-1-78769-139-1/
DO  - 10.1108/978-1-78769-139-120191009
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78769-139-120191009
AU  - Schrock Andrew R.
ED  - Paolo Cardullo
ED  - Cesare Di Feliciantonio
ED  - Rob Kitchin
PY  - 2019
Y1  - 2019/01/01
TI  - What is Civic Tech? Defining a Practice of Technical Pluralism
T2  - The Right to the Smart City
PB  - Emerald Publishing Limited
SP  - 125
EP  - 133
Y2  - 2024/04/19
ER  -