Smart citizens for smart cities: participating in the future

This paper discusses smart cities and raises critical questions about the faith being placed in technology to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Given increasingly challenging carbon reduction targets, the role of information and communication technology and the digital economy are increasingly championed as offering potential to contribute to meeting these targets within cities and buildings. This paper questions the faith being placed in smart or intelligent solutions through asking, what role then for the ordinary citizen? The smart approach often appears to have a narrow view of how technology and user-engagement can sit together, viewing the behaviour of users as a hurdle to overcome rather than a resource to be utilised. This paper suggests lessons can be learnt from other disciplines and wider sustainable development policy that champions the role of citizens and user-engagement to harness the co-creation of knowledge, collaboration and empowerment. Specifically, empirical findings and observations are presented from a case study of citizen engagement around an energy-from-waste infrastructure development. Recommendations are provided for engineers, planners and decision makers in order to help plan more effective engagement strategies for citizens, building users and stakeholders.