Take action and self-organize
‘Smart citizens’ may seem a a fairly new term, but we consider the first people that populated the Digital City in 1995 just as much smart citizens as the ones that nowadays are monitoring their local environment with sensors.
Back in 2005, we helped out the Sensornet network of citizens that measured the noise pollution of airplanes flying over. We made proposals to policy makers and official organisations to let citizens help measuring air pollution, but they were not yet ready for it then.
Ten years later the situation has changed, and within the current paradigm of ‘Smart Cities’, we are again looking for tools to empower citizens. This time organisations are more willing to jump aboard.
In a pilot, we provided Amsterdam citizens with a Smart Citizen Kit, to measure their local environment with affordable electronics. And wrote a Smart Citizen manifesto. And children of a school experimented together with artists during the Amsterdam Urban Innovation Week. To be continued!
Smart Citizen manifesto
Smart Citizen Kit project
Eclectis week