Perng, Sung-Yueh and Kitchin, Rob (2015) Solutions, Strategies and Frictions in Civic Hacking. Programmable City Working Paper 10. Working Paper. Programmable City Working Paper, Maynooth University.

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Abstract

Through the development and adoption of technical solutions to address city issues the smart city seeks to create effortless and friction-free environments and systems. Yet, the design and implementation of such technical solutions are friction-rich endeavours which produce unanticipated consequences and generate turbulence that foreclose the creation of friction-free city solutions. In this paper we argue that a focus on frictions is important for understanding civic hacking and the role of social smart citizens, providing an account of frictions in the development of a smart city app. The empirical study adopted an ethnographically informed mobile methods approach to follow how frictions emerge and linger in the design and production of a queuing app developed through civic hacking. In so doing, the paper charts how solutions have to be worked up and strategies re-negotiated when a shared motivation meets differing skills, perspectives, codes or designs; how solutions are contingently stabilised in technological, motivational, spatiotemporal and organisational specificities rather than unfolding in a smooth, linear, progressive trajectory.

Item Type:	Monograph (Working Paper)
Keywords:	friction; solutions; strategies; civic hacking; apps; smart city;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Geography Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Institutes > National Institute for Regional and Spatial analysis, NIRSA
Item ID:	7236
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2606939
Depositing User:	Prof. Rob Kitchin
Date Deposited:	15 Aug 2016 11:30
Publisher:	Programmable City Working Paper
Refereed:	Yes
Funders:	European Research Council Advanced Investigator Award
URI:	http://www.nuim.ie/progcity/ http://ssrn.com/abstract=2606939
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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