Infrastructuring citizenry in Smart City Vienna: investigating participatory smartification between policy and practice

ABSTRACT

The notion ‘smart city' has found a prominent place in urban visions, policies, planning, and infrastructure development, often promising citizens’ participation in shaping urban futures. This paper examines the frictions emerging between powerful Smart City Vienna policy imaginaries and their realization in real-world participatory experiments. Drawing on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) sensitivities, we highlight the challenges of giving voice to citizens and, in particular, the limits of participation in projectified (i.e. clearly temporalized) urban transformations. We not only observe the messiness, the unknowns, and uncertainties of participatory smartification processes but also the quite powerful infrastructuring of citizenry through these processes. This points to the need to design participatory processes able to respond to this open-endedness and processuality of temporalized urban transformation, always being attentive to who is experimenting with what and who can participate in shaping urban futures.

KEYWORDS:

• Participatory smartification
• infrastructuring citizenry
• infrastructural citizenship
• digitalization
• Smart City Vienna

Introduction

Vienna 2050 – Policymakers and administrators are aware that a Smart City strategy, if it is truly effective, cannot be imposed from above. Smart City Wien is therefore the outcome of a collective design process that is coordinated by the municipal authority but sustained and supported by great many individuals. It is founded on a shared awareness of the current challenges and a shared vision of the future that is worth committing to. Smart City Wien Framework Strategy 2019–2050 (SCW-FS 2019, 126)

This future vision to be achieved by 2050 has been voiced in a policy paper outlining the Smart City Wien framework strategy for sustainable urban development (SCW-FS 2019). It is one of numerous examples stressing that this reconceptualization of cities as ‘smart’ demands policy makers to not only digitally reinfrastructure the city but to do so in a bottom-up manner, reconsidering how citizens can (be encouraged to) participate. The notion of smart city has established its place in urban visions, politics, policies, standards, strategic planning, and infrastructural development. Alongside various forms of technological/digital solutionism (Morozov 2013) there is a growing trend to involve city residents in urban digital transformation processes (Coletta et al. 2019; Mora et al. 2023; Mora, Deakin, and Reid 2019; Schuilenburg and Pali 2021). These initiatives and their associated discourse align with over a decade of discussions on ‘responsible research and innovation (RRI)’ (Owen, von Schomberg, and Macnaghten 2021).

RRI emerged from a desire to shift from reactive to proactive governance, fostering technological transformations that are not just acceptable, but also societally desirable. In the context of urban transformations, it is crucial for citizens to be able to engage in innovation processes and to have a say in shaping their direction. Ultimately, it should be the citizens who determine whether or not technological advancements truly improve their real-life experiences (von Schomberg 2013).

Adopting a forward-thinking approach and engaging with the future possibilities that emerge from transformation is crucial in RRI (Stilgoe, Owen, and Macnaghten 2013). Adding the adjective ‘responsible’ to innovation is best understood as creating space for more ‘response-able practices’ (Felt 2017; Haraway 2008). In the context of urban smartification, it means that the focus is not solely on accountability or liability, though they are necessary, but more importantly on the ability to remain responsive to emergent issues. This approach is based on the understanding that technological transformation inherently involves experimentation, which requires to be critically cared for (de la Bellacasa 2017). It demands inclusion of diverse voices to ensure that the transformation is also just. To speak with Callon and co-authors (2009, 109): ‘if the end justifies the means, only debate can justify the end.’ Urban smartification thus necessitates reflexivity in recognizing and addressing the limitations, exclusions and emerging ‘collateral realities’ (Law 2011).

This paper will specifically examine the participatory efforts in the digital transformation of Vienna, as they are a key component of any response-able approach. Adopting an RRI approach encourages us to be attentive to a wide range of innovation values, particularly shifting our attention from the market value of innovation to questioning the values that are embedded in and realized through innovation (Felt 2017).

In this context, we draw on extensive scholarship on the smart city programs, participation experiments and the projected roles of smart citizens. Analysts have noted numerous incidences where participatory efforts failed to create an environment where citizens could actively reshape their urban surroundings (Cowley, Joss, and Dayot 2018; Gabrys, Pritchard, and Barratt 2016; Klauser, Paasche, and Söderström 2014; Marvin, Luque-Ayala, and McFarlane 2015). Such failures risk reducing the ‘smart citizen’ concept to an empty signifier, ‘a generic figure served through stewardship or civic paternalism’ (Kitchin 2019, 220).

While critique of participatory efforts is often general, it is crucial to gain a more nuanced understanding of the situated, local challenges faced when policy visions of participation are translated into practices in specific urban settings. We will critically examine both the tensions in the policy imaginaries that outline Vienna’s participatory smartification and the visions, potentials, and limits of concrete efforts to engage citizens in digital transformation.

In doing so, we do not view urban smartification as a single, well-aligned transformation, but rather as a highly experimental and multi-sited process. We aim to explore citizen engagement in planning and practice, and to determine whether certain forms of participation risk creating a compliant rather than proactive citizenry (Cardullo and Kitchin 2019; Datta and Odendaal 2019), or prematurely closing down issues instead of opening them up (Felt 2016; Stirling 2008).

Furthermore, Korn and coauthors (2019) notion of ‘infrastructuring publics’ and even more so Lemanski’s (2019, 1) notion of ‘infrastructural citizenship’ will support us in highlighting ‘the links between the material and political nature of’ a city’s relationships with its inhabitants. This sharpens our attention to the deep interconnections between the digital re-infrastructuring of the city, the expectations and practices of urban policymakers, and the everyday lives of citizens. In this context, citizenship refers not to a specific political status, but to the implicit social contract – rights and obligations – that comes with co-inhabiting an urban space undergoing transformation. This understanding will be crucial when examining the possibilities and limitations of participatory smartification.

This article aims to bridge insights from STS scholarships that delve into publics and participation in science and technology, with the growing body of literature on participation in urban (digital) transformation studies. While drawing from these diverse fields, our primary objective is to enrich and expand ongoing debates within Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) by presenting an empirically informed study of the tensions between policy imaginaries developed in documents and their translation into experiments in participation that take place in urban settings. Doing such a study in Vienna is specifically interesting for at least two reasons. First, Vienna can look back at a rich history of quite unique urban experiments in early twentieth century (Sepehr and Felt 2023) and it is thus of interest to see how this matters in the context of contemporary digital urban transformations. Second, Viennese policy makers explicitly aim to push simultaneously the digital agenda and participatory experiments in digital transformation. This explicit combination makes Vienna a good case study to render visible the emergent tensions between vision and practice.

In what follows we begin with an engagement with STS debates on the participatory turn, considering its enactments, achievements, and limitations. After presenting our material and the methods of analysis, we delve into an examination of key recent Smart City Wien (SCW) policy documents, providing insights into how these documents frame participation, identify participants, and outline the issues to be addressed by these participatory exercises. Following this, we analyze three cases of participatory activities. This allows us to witness the tensions emerging when urban experimentation is embedded in a projectification logic which predominantly shapes contemporary urban transformation processes (Torrens and von Wirth 2021). In conclusion, the paper revisits the concept of response-able innovation, reflecting on what all this means for being a smart citizen in Vienna.

Participation and experimentation in the context of digital urban re-Infrastructuring

The concepts of public participation, engagement, and involvement have gained widespread acceptance and significant support form policy actors at the time of writing this article. Within the context of participatory experiments in urban smartification, we could argue that both society and technology are subject to experimentation and testing (Engels, Wentland, and Pfotenhauer 2019). Participatory events thus become temporal laboratories where such experimentation and testing occur, with a laboratory defined as ‘a space with the properties to separate controlled inside from uncontrolled outside’ (Guggenheim 2012, 101). This distinction between the controlled inside and uncontrolled outside matters when studying the logic of participation in Vienna, as it draws our attention to which citizens are (or are not) given voice in such experimental setups. While participation is now widely advocated and practiced, it remains an ‘evasive, wily concept’ that evolves over time to encompass the diversity of aspects of deliberation and democratization (Kelty 2019), taking on place-specific characteristics. Analysts have also pointed to the fact how participatory exercises do not simply engage pre-existing groups but bring specific publics into being, while others are marginalized or even silenced (Braun and Schultz 2009; Felt and Fochler 2010). Even when citizens are being invited to participate, we must remain attentive to issues of participatory justice. That is, we need to care for differences among the participants in participatory settings that may affect their ability to express themselves and be heard.

Despite the extensive literature investigating various forms of participation, it is important to acknowledge that we are in a deeply ambivalent moment. On one hand, digital innovations have become inevitable players in urban development accompanied by ‘discourses on speed, pressure and promising directions to follow’ (Felt 2016, 179), which are characteristic for innovations more generally. On the other hand, as outlined in the introduction, we are witnessing increasing pressure to become more participatory and inclusive towards a wide range of societal actors when making techno-scientific choices – an approach that is generally quite time-consuming.

Time is undeniably a crucial resource when it comes to participation. It requires being mindful of the various temporalities that shape participatory processes and the combined impact of ‘different temporal dimensions on techno-scientific developments, democracy, citizenship and participation’ (Felt 2016, 181). This entails asking questions about the appropriate duration of participatory processes, as it determines which concerns can be brought to light and which ones will remain neglected. Moreover, it necessitates considering the optimal moment in the innovation process when citizens can voice their opinions. Specifically, we must contemplate whether a particular participatory experiment revolves around a predetermined issue for which participants can develop or adapt solutions.

de Saille (2015, 99) has even spoken of an ‘anxiety about untrustworthy publics’ and pointed to ‘increasing levels of control’ exercised around participatory engagements. When comparing different formats within any specific context, the importance of the situatedness of participatory events becomes palpable. This underscores the risk or reducing participation to mere ritual and strictly adhering to established protocols ‘by the book’ (Felt et al. 2013). Furthermore, Horst and Irwin (2009) have critically evaluated the idea of consensus, emphasizing that this approach could inadvertently limit the space for disagreement and suppress the expression of minority viewpoint.

Furthermore, the timeframe allocated for participation also plays a role in determining if the outcomes of such an event are deemed robust enough by other members of society and policymakers. It raises the question of whether sufficient time was dedicated to addressing the matters at hand (Flaherty 2010).

While these debates about the potential and limits of participation are crucial, in the context of urban transformations it also seems essential to consider the frictions that arise between the logics of urban bureaucracies and the impetus to make urban governance more inclusive and transparent. These moments ‘when bureaucracy meets the crowd’ have been captured very well by Kornberger et al. (2017) for the Viennese context. They have also been more recently addressed from an organizational studies perspective in a special issue by Mora et al. (2023). The collection of articles focuses on the role of bureaucracy in the context of smart city projects. Contributions point to the need for understanding and addressing local context specificities, highlighting the significance of place-based approaches when crafting community engagements – an argument which will clearly is visible in our analysis.

For example, in their study on urban transformation in Africa, Peter and Meyer (2023) advocate for the establishment of institutions supporting urban commons. They emphasize the importance of mitigating the formal-informal divide, particularly to empower marginalized citizens in asserting their rights and participating in city planning and development. Similarly, Pansera et al.’s (2023) research on Mexico City persuasively argues for the necessity of being attentive to institutional logics when implementing citizen participation. They highlight how a combination of clientelism, bureaucracy, references to economic hardship, technological solutionism, and the legal framing of participatory processes result in a limited form of engaged citizenship.

Considering these varied perspectives, our analysis of smart city efforts in Vienna will be informed by insights from policy documents and the outcomes of participatory experiments. We aim to draw inspiration from Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) debates to identify frictions between policy visions articulated in documents and the practical realizations seen in participatory experiments of digital urban transformation.

Research approach

Our research approach, considering the various aspects previously mentioned, finds promise in the application of an assemblage framework to examine participation in policy and practice. This approach allows us to address the intricate, interconnected nature of participatory processes and their outcomes (Stage and Ingerslev 2015). It brings to light the dynamic interplay of individuals, digital materialities, ideologies, organizations, procedures, timelines, and emotions, among other factors, all of which warrant our attention. This perspective facilitates a discussion on the quality of participation, particularly its capacity to redistribute power and decision-making equitably. Viewing participation through the lens of an assemblage prompts us to question how each participatory process assembles these diverse entities into specific forms, and how these processes effectively generate value and deliver the promised new capacities.

Our research methodology extends beyond a comprehensive analysis of policy documents that describe Vienna’s participatory urban smartification development envisioned. It encompasses a wide range of materials, including audio-visuals, ethnographic observations, and insights gleaned from websites and social media platforms associated with the SCW’s citizen engagement efforts. At the same time, part of the empirical work was done during the COVID-19 pandemic thus limiting our personal access to certain sites.

The primary policy documents examined in this research include the Smart City Wien Framework Strategy, 2014 (SCW-FS 2014), its updated 2019 monitoring report incorporating the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SCW-FS 2019), and the more recent climate-focused publication, Smart Climate City Wien: Our way to becoming a model climate city (SCCW-FS 2022). Another significant policy document, the Digital Agenda Wien 2025 (DAW2025 2019), serves as the city’s principal administrative guideline for digitalization procedures within the SCW. Additionally, we included the ‘Practice Manual Participation. Developing the city together’ (Manual 2012) as a foundational resource for our analysis of urban participation.

We also studied the smart city project, SMARTER TOGETHER¹, often hailed as a best practice example of smart citizen engagement across Europe. It aims at integrating both the technical and the societal aspects of smartification, stressing the necessity of participation when implementing smart city initiatives. We focused on the extensive final report on Viennese activities, supplemented by project deliverable reports and extensive PR and communication publications. Concretely we investigated an experiment on a neighborhood level in Vienna (Simmering).

These diverse documents are central to our research. We perceive them as being active agents (Asdal 2015) in shaping and materializing visions, reflecting ‘the social processes through which [they are] produced and reproduced’ (Shankar, Hakken, and Østerlund 2017, 59). We thus see ‘documenting’ not as an innocent practice, but as being an expression of agency and transformative potential, as playing an important role in projecting both undesirable and aspirational futures (Asdal 2015).

However, we recognize the limitations of relying solely on documents. To address this, we attended several events, including the Smarter Together annual gathering in the City Hall in December 2019, and the ‘Digital Day Wien 2019’ event. We also conducted eight in-depth interviews with policymakers and the administrative staff responsible for participation affairs.

To provide a comprehensive understanding of the participation assemblages in SCW, we selected three case studies from a wide range of examples encountered during our observation and analyzing of participation events in Vienna. Each of them offers a unique account of how different group of people engage in participation and how this relates to the issues at stake. These cases, individually and collectively, present the diverse ways in which individuals in Vienna engage with being a smart citizen, and the different forms of life and interactions that are embedded in the SCW’s experiments with participation and smartification.

‘Smart citizens’ encounter ‘Smart Vienna’ in policy documents

Vienna aligns with many global cities in proposing digital solutions to various issues. However, the city’s Digital Agenda aims to distinguish itself from other smart city initiatives by emphasizing a ‘central characteristic’ (DAW2025 2019, 14): ‘Technology follows people, and not people follow technology.’ This principle underscores the city’s commitment to involving citizens in the preparation of any measures, a promise that relates to Vienna’s self-representation as being ‘recognised worldwide for the deeply entrenched yet uncomplicated way in which it accords ample possibilities of participation and codetermination to all parts of the population’ (Manual 2012, 19).

Against the backdrop of this understanding of urban smart development, it is crucial to analyze the narrative formations surrounding three key aspects: (1) the envisioned participants, (2) the identified issues, and (3) the proposed formats of participation. This analysis will enhance our focus when investigating the three empirical case studies, particularly on how ‘public-participation-issue packages’ can emerge – that is, how these three elements find successful articulations within the context of digital urban transformation. In the following, we will delve into an analysis of these three elements.

‘Making publics’ in participatory policy imaginaries

The policy documents pose the question of who should ideally participate in the creation of a smart Vienna. To address this, we start with a brief analysis of the Practice Manual Participation: Developing the City Together (Manual 2012), particularly focusing on how it addresses the concept of publics. This manual was designed to aid city collaborators in professionally preparing and executing participation processes. Emphasizing the importance of clearly defined key concepts and of building trust in the envisioned digital transformation, it outlines four benefits of participatory policy making: ‘find solutions that suit the Viennese; achieve better results and work more smoothly; decide well and with acceptance; strengthen Vienna and democracy’ (Manual 2012, 8).

The manual categorizes the urban actors to be involved in the participatory processes into three subcategories: the general public, the organized public, and the expert public (Manual 2012, 9). The first subcategory equates to ‘citizens,’ further divided into individuals and citizen initiatives. However, it specifies that only those initiatives that are ‘loosely organized, event-related, and active for a limited time’ fall under this category. The term ‘citizen’ is broadly defined to include people without Austrian nationality and young people who do not yet have voting rights. The second subcategory, ‘organized public,’ encompasses ‘interest groups, civil society organizations, and more local organizations.’ Finally, the ‘expert public’ subcategory includes individuals with specialized knowledge in particular area, with the stipulation that those classified under this category should have ‘no predominant personal interest.’

The manual thus subtly links expertise to the ideal of an ‘objective approach,’ implying a lack of personal or emotional involvement, while the first two subcategories are allowed some degree of personal relation to the issue at hand. The terms ‘citizens’ and ‘people’ are most frequently used in the documents, while ‘the public’ is used less often. The term public is primarily used as an adjective for transportation, space, participation, engagement, sector, health, and more to emphasize the shared nature.

The manual’s classification logic and detailed differentiation of relevant actors and their roles do not translate into the policy documents. Only occasionally, and in a few specific problem constellations, do we encounter references to distinct situated subgroups that need to be attended to in the participatory smartification process to ensure the creation of a successful and sustainable digital environment. Age is one such exception. It is used to distinguish different needs and concerns regarding digital urban transformation, referencing to children, the youth, elders/65+, seniors and others. People’s relationship to place seems to be another aspect that attracted attention, as we encounter terms like residents, neighbors, or migrants, as well as frequent phrases like ‘Viennese citizens’ or ‘local citizens.’ The deployment of such language refers to either emotional attachment to a place or a specific kind of affectedness by the digital re-infrastructuring, the aim being that these citizens have a voice and are not overlooked or excluded.

Citizens, imagined as part of the participatory experiment, are described with positive adjectives such as active, assertive, concerned, or interested. Their agency is deemed important and valuable for realizing urban futures. The most recent report even emphasizes that ‘Smart City Wien relies on the engagement and initiative of the Viennese public. The project thrives when as many people as possible buy into it and make an active and autonomous contribution’ (SCCW-FS 2022, 144). While the language of buying-in suggests a clear pre-framing of the issue, it remains an invitation to participate in some form of shaping. However, the policy documents do not provide much detail on the concrete visions of how roles and agencies in such participatory processes should be distributed and realized in practice. It also remains vaguely described how voiced concerns would enter final decisions on developmental directions.

A city administration staff provided us an anecdotal glimpse into the discrepancy between the envisioned ideals of policy documents and the reality on the ground. They described the participants as ‘the usual suspects,’ specially ‘middle-aged to elder white men,’ who tend to dominate participatory settings by ‘rather complaining and scrutinizing the city administration experts relentlessly, without offering any valuable insights.’

The policy documents under scrutiny not only portray the participants and their active role in shaping the city’s future but also weave a narrative of a different nature. They depict the city and its digital re-infrastructuring as catalysts for citizen empowerment, promising improved services for them, based on the expertise of professionals who understand people’s needs and desires. These assertions also include assurance of employment, fair wages, and a decent quality of life. However, in certain sections of these policy texts, citizens are presented less as active participants and more as mere addressees of digitalization. They are positioned as passive beneficiaries for whom digital transformations are presented as inevitable progress. Here, decision-makers speak on their behalf, defining what they deem necessary and beneficial for the citizens. This approach raises a question, as suggested by Callon and co-authors (2009): Does this form of representation and decision-making inadvertently silence the voices of urban inhabitants, thereby preventing them from expressing their own needs and desires?

Articulating issues at stake

What is at stake when soliciting citizens to participate in shaping SCW? A detailed examination of the Smart City Wien Framework Strategy which spans from 2019 to 2050 (SCW-FS 2019), and its subsequent focusing on urban climate (SCCW-FS 2022) provides profound insights into the evolving argumentative logic.

Both the slogan ‘The future starts now!’ as the point of departure of these comprehensive reports, and the changed structure of the reports compared the framework strategy formulated in 2014 (SCW-FS 2014, 16), indicate a shift in conceptualizing the smartification process. The 2019 update of SCW’s planning until 2050 underscores the escalating climate crisis as primary challenge for urban development. It also points to other challenges such as urban growth, an accelerated ‘technological revolution,’ ‘end-to-end digitalisation […] penetrating all spheres of life’ and ‘consumption of resources […] increasingly exceeding the tolerable limits’ (SCW-FS 2019, 15–18). In their pursuit of ‘ambitious responses,’ Vienna’s policy reports then position their plans in the broader international policy landscape, such as the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Action, the European Climate Alliance and the UN 2030 Agenda with its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This reorientation of Vienna’s policy is not a choice driven by the citizens but described as a necessity to maintain the city’s leading role in international developments. This ambition is evident when the documents refer to Vienna as ‘setting new standards’ and being an ‘international pioneer’ and expressing the high commitment ‘to retain its position of frontrunner within the network of responsible cities and to continue shaping the global debate’ (SCW-FS 2019, 9). All these efforts are made with the aim of developing ‘a local response to global challenges’ (SCW-FS 2019, 15), and improving the lives of the inhabitants.

Vienna’s global challenges are thus translated into local infrastructural concerns. Smartification serves as a means to not only address these challenges but also to enhance the existing urban infrastructures while preserving Viennese local values and achievements (Sepehr and Felt 2023). It is evident that high-level issues pertaining to urban development are not framed by citizens’ visions, concerns or urban living experiences. Instead, they are defined through the translation of global issues into local responses, where citizens get voice at specific time windows, primary determined by policy processes.

The revised version of Vienna’s smartification agenda (SCW-FS 2019) and the subsequent urban climate report (SCCW-FS 2022) identify several ‘thematic fields.’ Each of these fields addresses the three main goals established by the city’s governance back in 2014 (SCW-FS 2014): conservation of resource, enhancement of quality of life, and promotion of innovation. These thematic fields encompass crucial areas such as energy supply, healthcare, mobility and transport and water and waste management, among others. Two new fields were introduced in 2019 compared to the 2014 version: ‘digitalisation’ and ‘participation.’ Although these fields were already present as overarching issues in 2014, they now manifest in two distinct ways: as integral parts of the urban transformation process and as stand-alone thematic fields i.e. issues that the strategy must explicitly address.

Each issue’s presentation adheres to a clear structured. It begins with a brief glimpse into the future. Under the heading ‘Vienna 2050,’ readers are transported into a future where the fundamental accomplishments of urban smartification have been realized. This is followed by a concise description of the ‘agenda’ and a series of derived objectives – often targeting 2030 – intended to ensure the realization of this future.

The Smart Climate City Wien report maintains a similar structure but deviates slightly by not focusing as much on a visionary future. Instead, the presentation of each issue begins with a section titled ‘What it’s all about,’ followed by a graphical representation of goals and an extended section on ‘What we are planning.’ This always concludes with a box labeled ‘Where we need support!’.

Over less than a decade, we thus observe a shift in how issues are presented, from being examples for a broader policy aim, to receiving individual attention with a futuristic touch, and finally, being framed as ongoing work that requires the support and engagement from citizens and policymakers alike.

Although it would exceed the scope of this paper to delve into how each issue is framed and its relation to participation, it is pertinent to our analysis to examine the section on digitalization more closely. The City of Vienna aims to address the challenge of living ‘in the age of the digitization of all areas of life’ by using the Digital Agenda Wien as a guiding strategy to navigate this transformative process successfully (DAW2025 2019, 4). Digitalization is thus presented as an inevitable, non-negotiable technical transformation to which all Viennese – from the municipality to citizens and businesses – must adapt. This explains why participation and interventions are generally conceived at a rather detailed micro-level and broader issues that might arise from these digital transformations remain unaddressed.

In this context, the grammar of a need-based approach replaces the recognition of these wider issues. This is why we also find the term ‘users’ and ‘involvement of users,’ and the statement that their ‘concerns, needs and interests have been the guiding principles for setting priorities, implementing projects and designing new services’ (DAW2025 2019, 3).

On a more general level, the digital transformation of urban life is linked to a number of broader issues. We once again encounter the general statement that ‘digitalisation […] is to serve people and their needs and further improve the quality of life in our city,’ which runs under the label of ‘digital humanism’ with Vienna aiming to become a center for developing expertise in this domain. Even the often-voiced fear of labor market transformation is reframed as an opportunity, with the city of Vienna pledging to ‘help its citizens to make the most of the opportunities offered by the digital revolution’ (SCCW 2022, 38). Digitalization is portrayed as an all-encompassing solution to societal problems: it is not only ‘a driver of innovations’ but ‘digital platforms and communication channels [will also] increase public engagement and participation’ (SCCW 2022, 38). In the context of digitalization, participation thus serves as both a means and an end. While participation supports the development of Vienna as a smart city, digitalization is anticipated to facilitate participation in innovative ways.

Enacting participation in urban policy

How should the urban actors and issues previously discussed assemble in participatory settings? And in which ways do these forms and formats of participation bring specific actors and their roles into being? Participation is presented in the policy documents in two ways: as an integral part of the urban digital transformation facilitated by the city government, and as a critical issue by itself that needs to be addressed.

The Practice Manual (2012) provides a comprehensive and nuanced guide to considerations necessary for implementing participation in urban planning. It begins by defining various terms used in the context of participation, aiming to distinguish clearly between information, consultation, and cooperation as the key modalities of engaging citizens in urban planning. The manual also highlights the importance of considering the myriad forms of informal and formal participation. The manual further delves into decision-making processes regarding the appropriateness of participation and the optimal timing for its implementation during the urban transformation process. The final sections of the manual, which includes ‘dos and don’ts,’ advice for planning the process, and a collection of methods, consistently emphasize the need for context-sensitive formats and the importance of clarifying from the outset what aspects are open to collective decision-making and what parameters are already set.

The shift towards greater participation in urban policymaking is reflected in policy documents such as the Smart City Wien Framework Strategy 2014. For instance, the document highlights that Vienna is globally recognized for its deeply rooted and ‘uncomplicated’ approach to providing extensive opportunities for participation and co-determination to all segments of the population. It underlines that ‘[c]itizens take active part in developing their city. There are many ways of participating: everyone has the possibility of voicing, discussing and implementing their own ideas and opinions regarding the city’ (SCW-FS 2014, 19).

Such sentiment is in a quite similar wording echoed in the updated Smart City Wien Framework Strategy 2019, with the addition of ‘co-creation and involvement in decision-making’ (SCW-FS 2019, 127). This addition signifies an important discursive shift. While Vienna is described as already having ‘multiple formats for public information and dialogue, as well as a body of relevant experience to build upon,’ it is also acknowledged that ‘[p]rocesses for actual participation in decision-making are less well established, and rules and tools will have to be developed for this purpose’ (SCW-FS 2019, 128). This distinction between participation as consultation and participation in decision-making is crucial, as it suggests a more challenging path towards integrating citizens into the processes of re-infrastructuring the city through digital technologies.

Furthermore, it is underlined that

special attention is to be paid to those groups who, for various reasons including language and educational barriers, lack of time and/or financial resources […], only have limited choices and scope for decision-making and therefore tend to be under-represented in traditional public participation processes. (SCW-FS 2019, 130)

Indeed, extensive research has revealed quite alarming disparities in the distribution of participatory activities across the city. Rather than being evenly spread, these opportunities seem to be concentrated predominantly in urban areas characterized by elevated income and educational levels, where avenues for participation more easily exist (Ahn and Mocca 2022, 44; see also Jonas and Hassemer 2020 for participation in Vienna).

The Smart Climate City Wien policy report (SCCW-FS 2022) subtly addresses the challenges by redefining the stakes in participation. The section title expands from ‘Participation’ (SCW-FS 2019) to ‘Participation, engagement & culture’ (SCCW-FS 2022, 114), emphasizing the need to view digital transformation as a cultural shift. The report speaks of ‘a shared vision of the future that is worth committing to,’ the need to foster ‘a culture of participation based on mutual respect,’ and repeats that ‘special attention is to be paid to those groups having limited choices and scope for decision-making.’ It further calls for using ‘the creative potential of artists and cultural producers’ (SCCW-FS 2022, 114).

The report explicitly mentions co-creation and living lab approaches, highlights opportunities provided by digital media, and promotes increasing participatory budgeting initiatives. While it outlines future actions, the report acknowledges the complexities inherent in participatory processes. It emphasizes the need for support in realizing the vision of involving ‘hard-to-reach groups’ and giving ‘them a say in policy decisions relating to climate change’ (SCCW-FS 2022, 118). The facilitation of participation plays a central role in making and unmaking publics that have a say, either fostering inclusion or furthering exclusion (Felt and Fochler 2010).

The concluding portion of this section necessitates a synthesis of the three primary observations and an exploration of whether and how the SCW policy documents manage to create robust public-issue-participation packages. This involves examining how issues engage publics through distinct participatory processes and understanding the interdependent relationship among these three elements. Regrettably, the policy documents do not directly address this crucial question, making it essential to focus on a series of case studies. To achieve a more detailed understanding of the localized adaptations of participatory smartification, we will examine three specific case studies.

Assembling participation in practice: analysis of three case studies

To explore citizen participation in Vienna, we will examine three specific cases: (1) the use of a mobile info-kiosk for neighborhood activities, (2) an e-mobility carsharing initiative in a large housing complex, and (3) a digital information/planning platform used for the creation of the Digital Agenda Wien (DAW2025 2019). These cases are part of a larger European project called SMARTER TOGETHER, in which Vienna played a prominent role (see Farías and Mendes (2018) for insights from Munich in the same project). By analyzing these cases individually and collectively, we hope to gain insights into the different approaches and strategies employed in Vienna to engage citizens in smart city initiatives.

Meeting the future smart citizen at street level

Our first case study introduces us to activities related to citizen engagement within the framework of the Smarter Together project. Under the label of Urban Living Lab which broadly stands for innovative methods to engage with citizens and raise their interest in taking part in activities (ST_D5.2.1. 2018), the plan was to establish a mobile space where local residents could interact with urban smartification projects. To this end, the Urban Renewal Office (GB*)² was converted into a mobile caravan booth, functioning as an info-kiosk named SIMmobile (an abbreviation for Simmering³ Mobile). The intention was to create a mobile InfoPoint that would ‘go where the people are’ (ST_D5.1.2. 2019, 6) and engage with as many residents as possible. One of our informants from GB* likened SIMmobile to a Würstelstand (a sausage stand), an iconic Viennese stall where people gather to discuss public affairs while enjoying sausages and drinks. The design was intended to make their presence mobile, flexible, noticeable, and enjoyable.

Despite emphasizing the importance of SIMmobile, another informant shared the challenges of engaging with citizens, citing an instance where only three citizens attended an event with five experts waiting for them. She described the situation as follows:

We have learned from previous experiences, and we understand the Viennese approach to citizen consultation. […] Usually, only the usual suspects show up, and the rest of the citizens are not accustomed to being asked for their opinion. In fact, people were so surprised that we approached them outside of a political party framework and not around election time (laughing).

This aligns with other experiences in the Austrian context (Felt, Fochler, and Müller 2006), where there is little to no culture of public participation. As this quote suggests, street-level engagement with citizens typically occurs during political campaigns around election time, with a clear objective – to attract votes.

Who were the intended audiences for this form of engagement? Children were a significant target group in the Smarter Together project. The project implementation report (ST_D5.1.2 2019) highlights the success of over 3500 people visiting SIMmobile, with children being described as: ‘Outreach (sic!) was either based on information or gamification, making children the real Smart City ambassadors’ (ST_D5.1.2 2019, 12). The use of the label ‘Smart Kids’ (ST_D5.1.2 2019, 14) suggests that children can be guided/educated to find their place in a specific urban future, while the chances for behavioral change in other population groups are perceived much lower.

On the other end of the spectrum, elderly people are also identified as an important target group in the digital urban transformation process. This focus points to the growing aging population in Vienna, where digitalization is seen as a necessity to assist the city in providing better services. Several programs are under development to support the aging population with their care needs, health, communication, and wellbeing. Alongside these developments, we also observe training being offered for elderly people to adapt to the digital culture.

In a sense, Vienna aims to prepare its aging population to adapt to the digital world while training the smart kids as the future generation of coders and programmers. Although the project does significant work to make smart city elements visible, the process already began with a fixed set of goals and plans to be implemented, with limited space for citizens to shape the objectives and priorities of urban development. Within these outreach activities, participation remains at the level of information exchange, being a collection of ideas, opinions, and some PR-style communication of goals to stabilize an already pre-framed vision of a smart future. These activities demonstrate what being smart should be like, while offering little space for actively contributing to the creation of a desired future. Participation, as occurred on street-level in this setting, thus becomes more of a means to stabilize and rehearse an already determined smartness for the citizens.

Participation incentives and public engagement in E-Mobility

E-mobility was a key goal of the Smarter Together project, aimed at bolstering environmental sustainability. Under this goal, the project launched an e-carsharing initiative for a housing complex with over 1000 tenants. The location was described to us as a subsidized housing area, not social housing, with households typically owning two cars and many inhabitants being of retirement age.

The project faced challenges in communicating the concept of e-carsharing to residents. Despite the exceptionally low rental price of one Euro per hour, residents were initially resistant and did not grasp the opportunity. Citizens were described to us as even being ‘angry’ as

they didn’t understand the entire concept, yeah? And we were surprised, in 2016 that they, none of them, understood the concept of carsharing, that it’s like for free for them if they don’t use it, but that it’s a good chance if they want to use it.

The project team had to work quite hard to convince them of the benefits. This resistance was attributed by our informant to skepticism ‘towards the city, skeptic[ism] towards the elites [money coming from the EU in this project]’ and as ‘something that we see all over in Europe.’

However, the residents’ reluctance to engage with e-carsharing cannot be explained away by pointing at a lack of understanding. Instead, it could be viewed as a solution that did not address a problem they were concerned about. The residents had no shared concern that would match the technological solution offered by the project. Interestingly, our discussions revealed that residents saw e-cars as being for the wealthy, not for them. In the end, the e-carsharing facility was implemented with only a few people participating and using the e-cars, most of whom being already interested in cars. For some, using the e-car replaced public transportation, which had been their first choice. This raises at least two kinds of questions about the sustainability dimensions of the initiative: does this initiative replace classical car ownership or increase urban car usage? The latter raises the question of energy sustainability, and what will happen once – the now subsidized – rental prices would significantly increase after the project’s end, which bring into doubt the affordance of cars and distributive justice it holds.

So, what does this e-mobility story tell us about participation? It’s not just a prime example of ‘no issue, no publics’ (Marres 2007; 2015). Rather, it shows that a pre-defined solution (e-mobility) must first become an issue of public concern to become a matter of public engagement. The e-car, despite its extremely low price, did not foster engagement around e-mobility or trigger a wider reflection process. Lacking a shared problem perception and a trust base, the offer failed to attract interest and make the project meaningful for a wider group of residents.

If the goal was to involve citizens in reshaping mobility, then e-carsharing didn’t seem to be the means to reach this end. The assumption that temporary low-cost access would create engagement was based on the wrong premise that people shared the same concern. To bridge the gap between the residents and the project’s understanding of the issue at stake, the project had to offer incentives in the hope of forming publics to carry on with the project’s purpose. In this context, the city becomes a realm of social experimentation, where the urban public is shaped and molded through the envisioning, development, and implementation of smart infrastructures. Exposing citizens to smart infrastructuring reveals the experts’ notions of publics and participation, exposing the democratic deficit that exists in engaging with citizens during the process of defining the very purpose of smartification.

Vienna’s participatory digital governance

The final case study brings us to the heart of this paper, focusing on participation in drafting Vienna’s digital agenda, which is intended to promote participation. The statement, ‘Vienna has 1.8 million brains, let’s use them’ (DAW2025 2019, 14), found in the policy document related to the preparation of DAW2025, is designed to highlight the need to expand input from societal actors and underscore the importance of citizens as a wellspring of creativity and inclusivity. This statement further lays the groundwork for what the document refers to as Vienna’s ‘digital participation culture.’

In crafting and promoting this narrative, the document seeks to employ a method inspired by a participatory process⁴ used in 2012⁵ for the drafting of the Vienna Charter, which utilized a combination of online and offline participation methods. The overarching argument is that digitalization is facilitating Vienna’s transition from a top-down bureaucratic governance model to a more participatory one. As such, the document provides a valuable lens through which to observe how ‘the digital’ opens up space for the democratization of urban future imaginaries and the roles citizens can effectively play within the process of shaping these imaginaries.

DAW2025 (2019) designed a three-step process to involve citizens in defining Vienna’s transition to a smart city: first, an online collection of ideas for the Digital Agenda, where citizens are envisioned to provide input. Second, DAW experts select and bundle the collected ideas to create a draft action plan. Third, participants can review the ideas and express choices through an online voting platform.

The first and third steps were conducted on an online participation platform, with approximately 867 participants who made 320 comments and posted 1303 votes. Although the significance of these numbers in terms of the level and type of participation is unclear, the experts we interviewed viewed it as a participation milestone. Our informants described the process as a significant advancement compared to previous efforts, stating, ‘the previous Digital Agenda was written by two experts in this office. But for this update, at least 600 people had a say. This is a first.’

To invite participants, the DAW primarily sent out an email to all the companies and individuals who had previously worked with the DAW. This approach mirrors Wynne’s (2007) concept of ‘invited participation,’ where experts purport to invite the general public to a consultation meeting but actually only bring only a very small subset of potential publics to the table. However, to broaden potential participation, the DAW experts also promoted the process on their website and put-up posters around the city.

Our informants were largely convinced that the email list was the most effective means of invitation, as the people on the list already shared an interest in digitalization and a good understanding of it. However, despite the open invitation policy, the group of people who engaged in the process remained relatively small. We encountered some reflection on the limitations of this approach among the DAW experts. And we generally concur with Lerman’s (2013) observation that only relying on digitally literate citizens and thus sidelining the needs of digital non-users creates new forms of ‘voicelessness,’ as the medium technologically and socially preselects specific kinds of publics that can participate.

Investigating digital participation then draws our attention to the questions posted on the platform, where we encounter a quite strong pre-framing of the issues at stake. As the questions already position ICTs as the solution, participation is mainly limited to some adaptation work. This is a classic example of cooptation and contributory autonomy (Kelty 2019, 14), putting the autonomy of the individual ‘to work in the service of a collective.’ It opens ‘the door to more participation, but of a much less powerful kind’ (Kelty 2019, 173). This form of participation could therefore be understood as potentially ‘democratizati[ng] of inequality’ (Lee, McQuarrie, and Walker 2015) through strengthening the voices of those ready and digitally skilled enough to participate, thus reinforcing existing forms of inequalities. The DAW participation event also rewarded the top three ideas (based on the number of votes each idea receives) with a grant for implementation. This was meant to incentivize participation using nudging techniques to increase user activity on social media.

We thus see a vision of urban governance that understands ‘people as infrastructure’ (Simone 2004), as a collection of individuals ready to depose their visions. Consequently, people do not gather around an issue (to be) defined by them, but they are encouraged to participate in discussing rather specific aspects/choices of an already largely defined solution, which experts saw as crucial for safeguarding Vienna’s future. In this context, ‘the digital’ needs to be reflected on two levels: while it is the subject of deliberation it also shapes the space in which this deliberation is supposed to occur. Thus, both issues and publics are largely predefined in the participation process.

Discussion and conclusion

This study delved into the multiple tensions between policy ideation and practical implementations concerning participation in smart urban transformation processes. In doing so, we understand policy documents as ‘working upon, modifying and transforming’ the reality of possibilities for citizens (Asdal 2015, 74). While there is a robust discursive commitment to participation in urban digital reinfrastructuring and a drive to ensure that Vienna meets the inclusivity goals, we also pointed at important contradictions, tensions, ambivalences, and limitations.

First, our observations resonate with what Chilvers and Kearnes (2019, 350) term a ‘residual realist imaginary of participation.’ This implies that the participants and the suggested formats in the context of SCW were often assumed to be ‘pregiven, and external categories’ that were ‘imported into the design […] of participatory practices’ (Chilvers and Kearnes 2019, 349). While it was crucial to clarify the different understandings and formats of participation through the development of the Manual, this approach seemed to limit the space for more diverse forms of bottom-up, experimental, co-produced socio-material practices of raising voice. The ‘ideal citizen’ would need to conform to these pre-existing roles and formats, and those who were seen as not aligning or trusting the city policy actors would then be conceptualized as an obstacle to the full potential of digital transformation.

Thus, the policy agendas seem to lack the necessary responsiveness and did not take into account the fact that publics are not pre-existing entities but are formed through participatory practices. This lack of reflection runs the danger of leading to an unequal and unjust distribution of voice, as certain ways of contribution were favored over others. Furthermore, there is a frequently diagnosed lack of a vibrant tradition of participation in Austrian culture, making it important to carefully create space and build trust in these more bottom-up approaches to urban transformation, particularly for underprivileged segments of the population.

Secondly, it is essential to draw attention to the inherent friction between formally ascribing quite active roles to citizens and performing a specific kind of residual participatory paternalism (Degelsegger and Torgersen 2011). This refers, in our case, to the co-existence of the imaginary of active citizens who can and want to shape urban digital environments, and of citizens who need to be catered with services by experts knowing better what they need and what is the best for them. As a result, we most frequently encounter invited forms of participation (Wynne 2007) where the space and ways of participation are somewhat predefined.

Thirdly, while policy papers remain quite generic, participatory activities often address very specific, well-delimited and clearly pre-framed issues. This not only shows the power of city bureaucracies (Mora et al. 2023), but creates disconnected silos of participation, narrows down who should ideally participate within the framework of each projectified experiment, and times participation in ways to fit the project logic. These projectified temporalities also define how smart urbanism can be ‘conceptualized, how problems get assembled, how publics are made and how potential action and responsibility is imagined’ (Felt 2016, 192). Such participatory projects follow a managerial logic of efficient organization, an approach that risks rendering invisible the deep interconnectedness of issues, experiences, and participatory collectives, as well as the messiness and non-linearity of such transformation processes. This might, as Torrens and von Wirth (2021, 14) have argued, contribute to ‘depoliticising experiments’ and not necessarily support complex long-term sustainable transformations. For a responsible innovation perspective, this temporal logic of the project creates thus an important limitation which needs careful consideration.

Considering that any participation assemblage inherently means collective experimentation, we also argue for the importance of remaining responsive in the design process and devote more attention to what comes before and after the discrete moment of any participatory event, thus, to extend reflection beyond the project framing. Concretely, this means that taking participation in urban reinfrastructuring seriously, a much more processual approach is needed, stretching over longer periods of time. This calls for attention to the fact that participatory urban transformation can never consist solely in a set of well-confined experiments aiming to reach solutions to pre-framed problems or to make a specific technological choice. This is particularly pertinent of digitalization as it is perceived by the policy actors themselves also as a cultural transformation.

To overcome limitations, urban governance would have to keep exploring ways of engaging with citizens, allowing the bottom-up creation of ‘public-participation-issue packages’ that meet the visions and needs of Viennese citizens, and gives them enough space for experiencing being a collective. Only this would make meaningful exchange possible over longer periods in time. For sure this challenges the very logic of digital reinfrastructuring which often makes choices which can hardly be questioned at later points in time (Felt et al. 2023). This brings us to our last broader conclusion.

We emphasized that the discourse on smart urbanism aligns with the principles of RRI on multiple levels, with a particular emphasis on the participatory aspects that ensure inclusivity, enhance reflexivity, promote collective anticipation, and, in turn, enable a responsible approach to smartification. However, upon examining specific cases, we identified significant limitations in implementation, which we attributed to the framings articulated in policy documents and the associated funding within projects.

We highlighted the necessity of studying responsible urban transformation, not solely by focusing on the act of participation and its transformative potential, but also by examining the hinterland created by policy documents. They are powerful actors in not only announcing the need for participatory transformation but also making adequate space for it. Therefore, it is crucial to be mindful of the existing discrepancy, the policy-implementation gap, and recognize that analyzing such disparities contributes to a critical reflection on the true potential of RRI and its further development.

Our analysis reveals that citizen participation cannot be viewed as an activity separated and distinct from the infrastructural imaginaries and developments of smart city initiatives by institutional actors. Instead, it is crucial to recognize that participatory activities are deeply intertwined with digital infrastructures and with being an urban citizen. This leads us to reconsider Lemanski’s (2019) notion of ‘infrastructural citizenship’ and reflect on the entanglement of digital infrastructures and citizenship through and beyond the participatory experimentation in the process of urban digitalization. It is important to acknowledge proactively that any urban transformation into a smart city is not solely a technological process, as it also significantly impacts the ways of being a citizen in these new urban spaces – including rights, possibilities to make one’s voice heard and new forms of distributed responsibilities.

Hence, even though smart urban infrastructuring often seems at first glance technical and at the service to people, it is essential to be attentive to two key aspects. First, we need to consider the many ‘political, ethical, and social choices that have been made throughout its development’ (Bowker et al. 2010, 99), which created situations of inclusion or exclusion and forces us to ask the question of participatory justice and the implementation of inclusive urban environments. As the process of urban transformation predominantly happens through the tool of projects (defined and financed by urban policymakers), the choices made are often only assessed individually and not in their collective impact – which is a challenge for RRI approaches anchored in the clearly temporalized project logic. Second, our attention has to move beyond infrastructural citizenship and focus also on the infrastructuring of citizenry themselves accomplished through the ongoing closely entangled making of digital and participatory infrastructures, on one hand, and urban citizens, on the other (Korn et al. 2019). Infrastructuring citizenry points to the fact that designers of participation create within the spaces carved out by policy making a specific local blend of social and technical resources – i.e. infrastructures – which stabilize and format citizens’ capacities to express their visions of issues concerning urban pasts and futures; this in turn also allows them to develop specific identities as active citizens and not others.

That is the reason why it is essential to see the smartification of Vienna as a large-scale socio-technical transformation, which is not solely about a set of technological choice through participation. Rather, it is a real-world experiment (Gross 2018) which needs to admit that a separately controlled inside is not possible, and to acknowledge the messiness, the unknowns, and uncertainties of digital transformation processes as well as of the participatory events within them. It is therefore key to open up the idea of experimentation to more carful broader consideration, always asking who is experimenting with what and in which kind of temporal framing. It also means to reflect that participatory infrastructures potentially not only assure that diverse inputs are integrated in the making of urban futures; these very participatory infrastructures which should make smart urban transformation more response-able might actually tame and narrow down the spaces of imagination and expression – of agency.

Acknowledgements

Research is a collective enterprise and thus we want to acknowledge the diverse moments in which we got valuable feedback that have entered this writing. This has happened at conferences and during workshops, but also in many invaluable individual conversations at the department and beyond. We also want to thank the anonymous reviewers and editors for their careful reading and insightful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Smarter Together is a major EU funded smart city project with Vienna being a lighthouse city (ST_Vienna. 2021). See: https://www.smartertogether.at/

2 GB* stands for the notion of Gebietsbetreuung, meaning those who care for a specific urban area.

3 One of the 23 districts in Vienna (>100.000 inhabitants) with the lowest average age of population, a moderate average income and the lowest share of inhabitants with an academic degree in Vienna.

4 For more information on the process and its results see: https://www.wien.gv.at/english/living-working/vienna-charter-results.html

5 An overview of the participation methods used in the Vienna Charter: https://www.partizipation.at/vienna-charta.html