Digital inequality in smart cities

The project studies urban digitalization and smart city development with the concept of digital inequalities, referring here to disparities in citizens' digital capability including access, use and understanding. The project is executed in collaboration with Helsinki and Espoo, the two largest cities of Finland. It is based on design anthropological approach meaning that it produces new knowledge but also new ideas, concepts, and applications. The project produces new knowledge on how city inhabitants experience digital inequality in cities that are executing urban digitalization intensively and are building smart city districts. Secondly, it explores profound ways to enhance digital equality; i.e. it searches for new ways and principles for creating smart cities. Instead of being an agenda that increases inequality, the bold aim is to turn smart city into a vehicle for increasing digital equality and people's technological agency, i.e. understanding and control over new technologies.