LIST OF PANELS

Recent developments of smart cities around the world and in China have heightened both scholarly and public attention to the issues of trust and transparency. A smart city (sometimes known as the digital city) describes a city that incorporates information and communication technologies (ICT) to enhance the quality and performance of public services (Courtant & Le Galès, 2019). The smart city also links with processes of co-creation, a concept often coupled with the use of new technologies (Carayannis and Campbell, 2009; Leydesdorff and Zawdie, 2010; Bovaird, 2007). Meanwhile, trust (and its corollary mistrust), which lies at the heart of debates regarding contemporary governance, has long been identified as an essential component of social, economic and political life. The general context in the vast literature is one of decline in trust, which affects the main domains of trust identified by Zmerli and Newton (2011), namely the inter-personal, social and institutional dimensions. Trust in the equity, transparency and neutrality of a public policy lies at its foundation as a public good.

The panel is centred around one central and two complementary research questions:

·         Is Trust a precondition for effective public policy? The OECD (2017, p.3), notably, has argued that ‘governments cannot function effectively without the trust of citizens, nor can they successfully carry out public policies, notably more ambitious reform agendas.’ Our first hypothesis is that a broad-based thin trust is a condition for effective public policy

·         Is trust enhanced as a result of more open forms of urban government in the Smart City? Our second hypothesis is the optimistic one that technology is the hand maiden of more participatory forms of urban governance.

·         Do Smart City dynamics undermine trust, on account of intrusive transparency? Our third hypothesis it the dystopian one that the Smart city undermines rights to confidentiality by commodifying data and introduces a new form of technological fracture amongst citizens.

Adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, this panel is dedicated to showcasing various dimensions of the Smart City from diverse perspectives and contributes to theoretical elaboration and empirical enrichment for smart governance. The panel title links multi-disciplinary debates that have particular purchase at the level of urban politics to the question of the Smart City. Rather than primarily involving a narrow set of technical issues, debates over the digital city get to the heart of the public sphere, as they involve public-private interactions, trans-national learning, public debates and ethical dilemmas: in sum, all matters of interdisciplinary social scientific inquiry.

Recent developments of smart cities around the world have heightened both scholarly and public attention to the issues of trust and transparency. A smart city (sometimes known as the digital city) describes a city that incorporates information and communication technologies (ICT) to enhance the quality and performance of public services.

The panel is centred around one central and two complementary research questions:

·         Is Trust a precondition for effective public policy?

·         Is trust enhanced as a result of more open forms of urban government in the Smart City?

·         Do Smart City dynamics undermine trust, on account of intrusive transparency?

Papers are welcome from established and new researchers who are interested in trust, smart cities and urban governance. These themes include but are not limited to the following:

1. Smart governance foundations, models, frameworks and principles

2. Open governance, participatory decision making and accountability

3. Greenness and sustainability of Smart Cities

4. Security, privacy and identity issues in Smart Cities

5. Citizen-centricity and citizen-driven solutions for Smart Cities

6. Trust in public-private partnership in Smart Cities

7. Ethical debates of the Smart City

8. Comparative studies at global, national and city level related between China and other countries.

The panel will be structured as a focused and in-depth discussion of 4-15 papers, which will be considered for possible publication in Asian Studies Review on the special issue of “Trust and the smart city”.

The deadline for abstract is January 20, 2021. Abstracts should be no more than 400 words not including identifying and contact information. Please indicate in your submission whether you are going to participate in a panel. The decision will be notified by January 29, 2021. (For papers selected for the special issue, full drafts will be due in early summer 2021.) Please send inquiries, and submit abstracts to smilingshirly@hkbu.edu.hk.