Photo: Sean Pavone | Dreamstime.com

How Long Beach is changing the conversation on ‘smart cities’

26 July 2021

by Sarah Wray

As Ryan Kurtzman began developing the smart city strategy for Long Beach, he quickly discovered something illuminating: most residents had never heard of “smart cities”.

A survey and workshops with citizens also revealed that people in Long Beach had strong views on how their data is used. While some could see clear benefits, others didn’t always see the relevance of smart city technologies to their lives, and many were concerned about privacy.

Ryan Kurtzman, Long Beach

These findings are now shaping the city’s approach to the adoption of emerging technology.

In October 2019, Long Beach’s Mayor, Robert Garcia, called for the development of a strategy to enable the city to be more proactive about how it both engages with and regulates new technology.

Kurtzman, Smart Cities Program Manager for the 500,000-strong city just outside Los Angeles, said like many cities, Long Beach was forced to play catch-up and quickly react as technologies such as e-scooters were launched.

There’s also a growing recognition that cities need to build trust with residents around how they are using technology and data. Without this, they may face a backlash.

Sidewalk Labs’ smart city project in Toronto, for instance, faced ongoing scrutiny over issues such as privacy, transparency and citizen engagement before eventually being cancelled due to “economic uncertainty”. Elsewhere, San Diego switched off its smart streetlight sensors in September last year, following privacy and surveillance concerns and controversy relating to police accessing camera footage. The sensors remain deactivated until an ordinance for how surveillance technologies are governed is in place.

Perceptions

Against this backdrop and in line with the digital inclusion initiative Long Beach has had in place since 2018, Kurtzman wanted to ensure that residents were included in the process of creating the smart city strategy.

He said: “We wanted to better understand residents’ perceptions about technology and organise a programme in the city of Long Beach that not only respects their feedback but really centres it in our process.”

Community engagement started with a survey of around 500 people and several small workshops which included around 150 residents overall. The city aimed to reach a broad range of the population, including those deemed most at risk of being left behind by new technologies, such as communities of colour and older residents, as well as young people who could bring a different perspective again.

The research looked at people’s excitement and reservations about new technology as well as their feelings on issues such as data and privacy, facilitated by walk-throughs of real deployments in Long Beach. These include a parking app and smart meters, and the city police department’s partnership with doorbell camera company Ring.

The survey showed that 58 percent of residents in Long Beach knew nothing about ‘smart cities’.

Kurtzman said: “The term smart city is one that really has its roots in the private sector. What I took from this finding was that moving forward when we do talk about smart cities, we have to frame it in ways that relate directly to community members’ lived experience.”

This means talking plainly about security cameras or licence plate readers, for example, rather than “smart” technology.

Context

The community outreach also showed that while many residents are very concerned about data collection and privacy, context matters.

Nearly half of respondents said they were highly concerned about their privacy while a third said they were somewhat concerned. Only five percent of participants expressed no concern at all when asked about data collection practices. These findings showed a need to ensure residents can clearly understand how the city is sharing or analysing their data.

The research suggested citizens are more likely to feel comfortable with their personal data being used if they can see clear benefits, such as reducing congestion or improving public safety. At the other end of the spectrum, three-quarters of those surveyed believed the city should be prohibited from selling personal information to data brokers, retailers and other private businesses.

Armed with these insights, Long Beach has developed two documents to guide decisions and deployments – a smart city strategy and a set of data privacy guidelines.

Kurtzman said these are “North Star” documents and a first step towards more formal policies or ordinances. The city is also developing new contract language and templates for requests for proposals (RFPs) and other procurement processes to ensure the guidelines are upheld.

However, he added: “We learned that if we’re going to be exploring a surveillance policy or further data privacy guidelines, we can’t really take a one-size-fits-all-approach. We need to make sure that as we’re evaluating vendors and considering a legal framework around new technology, we are considering each technology individually.”

This could mean implementing privacy impact assessments such as those used by cities like Portland and Seattle.

“It’s important that we continue to think more broadly about this and strike a balance between what we can achieve based on our resources and what we have a responsibility to achieve based on what we heard from our residents,” Kurtzman said.

Open innovation

Already, though, having the new policy foundations in place is expanding Long Beach’s ability to open up to emerging ideas with confidence and try new technologies via pilots. This year, the city has issued 12 smart city challenges, soliciting ideas for mobility data collection, digital identity management, homelessness services contractor management and more. A further challenge focused on the use of augmented reality.

Next, Long Beach plans to launch an unsolicited proposal programme which would “flip traditional procurement on its head,” allowing companies to submit ideas directly rather than responding to a challenge or RFP.

“We’re asking them to ensure that their ideas are in alignment with the guiding principles,” Kurtzman said.

He added: “Our goal is to shift the power dynamic in the smart cities conversation away from technology companies dictating the smart cities vision, to communities and stakeholders dictating that vision to cities and vendors.”

Image:  Sean Pavone Dreamstime.com

  • Reuters Automotive
https://cities-today.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Dawn-crop.png

Technology inclusion goes beyond internet access in LA

  • Reuters Automotive