| Title | Citizen-centric Smart City Development: The Case of Smart Dubai's "Happiness Agenda" |
|---|---|
| ID_Doc | 37696 |
| Authors | Zakzak, L |
| Title | Citizen-centric Smart City Development: The Case of Smart Dubai's "Happiness Agenda" |
| Year | 2019 |
| Published | |
| Abstract | Developing a "smart city" can follow numerous pathways. Policymakers can follow a technology-focused pathway, a data- driven approach or an environmentally-influenced perspective, among many others. However, following a people-centric smart city developmental path requires a societal approach that involves public engagement and participation as a core developmental philosophy. This requires the city to develop the capacity to widely measure wellbeing and the state of "happiness", and respond through its public policy frameworks. City-wide innovations using societal big data are making such engagements feasible today. The case of Dubai's "Happiness Agenda" is an example of a smart city initiative that applies a hybrid of big data-driven tools and more traditional approaches in citizen-government interactions. Dubai's transformation plan, is primarily fueled by digital technology and data, with a core focus on public "happiness" and making Dubai one of the "happiest" places to live - as stated in the vision of Smart Dubai Office. Within the smart city framework, such vision entails the challenge of shaping happiness into national policy goals and employing digital technology to apply this vision. This paper reports the findings of semi-structured interviews with the people behind the design of Dubai's Happiness Agenda. The findings highlight the challenges and enablers of developing a people-centric developmental pathway towards "happiness" in the age of big data and smart cities. Even when a positive view towards citizen-engagement exists in government, how can the smart city stakeholders reach a unified definition for happiness in the digital age? How can big data enable the mapping of various needs of a cosmopolitan and culturally diverse society? This paper provides an exploratory case study of citizen-centric and data-driven smart city development initiative, which can provide valuable policy lessons to smart city policymakers and enrich the smart city and e-participation literature.(1) |
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