Smart cities should empower citizens by giving them access to data and systems. The CitySDK provides open APIs and standards to share data and solutions across cities. It has been used to build apps that give citizens information on mobility, parking, trees, and public services. By prototyping quickly and engaging citizens, cities can better address problems through civic initiatives and harness the knowledge of their smart citizens.

1. Smart Cities,
Smart Citizens and
the case for CitySDK.
Frank Kresin
Research Director
@kresin / frank@waag.org

3. Smart Citizen Manifesto
We, citizens of all cities, take the fate of the places we live in into our own hands.We care about the familiar buildings and the
parks, the shops, the schools, the roads and the trees, but far more about the quality of the life we live in them.About the
casual interactions, uncalled for encounters, the craze and the booze and the love we lost and found.We know that our
lives are interconnected, and what we do here will impact the outcomes over there.While we can never predict the
eventual effect of our actions, we take full responsibility to make this world a better place.
Therefore, we will refuse to be consumers, client and informants only, and reclaim agency towards the processes, algorithms
and systems that shape our world.We need to know how decisions are made, we need to have the information that is at
hand; we need to have direct access to the people in power, and be involved in the crafting of laws and procedures that
we grapple with everyday.
Fortunately, we are not alone.We are well educated and have appropriated the tools to connect at the touch of a button,
organize ourselves, make our voices heard.We have the tools to measure ourselves and our environment, to visualize
and analyse the data, to come to conclusions and take action.We have continuous access to the best of learning in the
world, to powerful phones and laptops and software, and to home-grown labs that help us make the things that others
won’t. Furthermore we were inspired by such diverse examples as the 1% club,Avaaz, Kickstarter, Couchsurfing, Change
by Us, and many, many more.
We are ready. But government is not. It was shaped in the 18th century, but increasingly struggles with 21st century problems
it cannot solve. It lost touch with its citizens and is less and less equipped to provide the services and security it had
pledged to offer.While it tries to build ‘smart cities’ that reinforce or strengthen the status quo - that was responsible for
the problems in the first place - it loses sight of the most valuable resource it can tap into: the smart citizen.
Smart Citizens:
• Will take responsibility for the place they live, work and love in;
• Value access over ownership, contribution over power;
• Will ask forgiveness, not permission;
• Know where they can get the tools, knowledge and support they need;
• Value empathy, dialogue and trust;
• Appropriate technology, rather than accept it as is;
• Will help the people that struggle with smart stuff;
• Ask questions, then more questions, before they come up with answers;
• Actively take part in design efforts to come up with better solutions;
• Work agile, prototype early, test quickly and know when to start over;
• Will not stop in the face of seemingly huge boundariesbarriers;
• Unremittingly share their knowledge and their learning, because they know this is where true value comes from.
All over the world, smart citizens take action.We self-organise, form cooperations, share resources and take back full
responsibility for the care of our children and elderly.We pop up restaurants, harvest renewable energy, maintain urban
gardens, build temporary structures and nurture compassion and trust.We kickstart the products and services we care
about, repair and upcycle, or learn how to manufacture things ourselves.We even coined new currencies in response to
events that recently shook our comfortable world, but were never solved by the powers that be.
Therefore, we will refuse to be
consumers, client and informants only,
and reclaim agency towards the
processes, algorithms and systems
that shape our world.

4. Design Rules for Smarter Cities
• Your citizens know more than you.
• Prototype early and fast, engage the stakeholders, iterate quickly and be
prepared to start all over.
• Embrace self-organisation and civic initiative, but help to make the results
sustainable and scalable.
• Know what you are talking about in the face of technology. Never rely on
consultants that will sell you more consultancy, not solutions.
• Have binding decisions made at the lowest level possible and actively preach
self-governance.
• Favour loosely coupled, smaller systems over monoliths and mastodons, and
use peer-defined standards to glue together the parts. Small systems tend to fail
sometimes; large systems fail for sure.
• To raise and deserve trust, build systems based on data reciprocity and
transparency.
• Reuse existing parts and design your additions for reuse, adding to the public
domain and thereby strengthening its capacity to act and learn.
http://waag.org/nl/blog/design-rules-smarter-cities

5. Waag Society

6. Meaningful Encounters

7. Principles:
Best producer is the user
(S)he can learn to make
anything
Sharing is key to innovation
Making is crucial to
understand & act in the
world

8. Knowledge institutes
Developer hubs
Accelerators
Innovation labs

11. Apps for Europe

12. Open Data & Smart Cities
• Economical value
• Efficiency
• Transparency
• Innovation
• Social value

13. • Citizens
• Companies
• Civil servants
• Developers
• Politicians
• Journalists
Actors

14. Questions
Schools:
• Is there a safe bicycle lane
towards it?
• How about the air quality?
• Any sports field around them?
• How many schools does this
neighbourhood need?
• How about scores?

15. • Interview with alderman
• Contact details on web
• Three files from the Department of
Education
• One open data website
• Two spreadsheets
• Several PDF’s
Data Sources

16. Widely varying identifications
Statistics
Office
Education
Department
Public
Transport
Service
Budget Office
Emergency
Services
Administration nr.
Coordinates
Various ID’s
Address & timetables
Budget ID

17. For each school:
• 6+ queries
• 6+ results
- Files
- Databases
- Values
- Standards

18. • Labor intensive
• Wide margins
• Unreliable
• Not interoperable
Outcomes

19. THERE ARE BETTER WAYS

20. City SDK
20
Open, interoperable service
interfaces.
Processes, guidelines and usability
standards.
Sharing, re-using and transferring city
solutions across cities.
Not inventing from scratch, but
mapping, using & developing global best
practices

21. CitySDK coverage
Three domains:
Participation,
Tourism & Mobility
212012 Preparation stage2012 Preparation stage 2013 Lead Pilots2013 Lead Pilots
2013/14
Replication Pilots
2013/14
Replication Pilots

22. Mobility: Multimodal systems

23. Smart Mobility
 services on real-time traffic
data from multiple sources
 Results: open source travel
assistant application,
several harmonized cities’
backend systems,
cluster of SME developers
working on services for
Smart Mobility
23

24. CitySDK Linked Data
• Collects
• Annotates
• Links
• Distributes

29. mobility

30. Architecture
App(lications)
Intelligence
CitySDK LD API
Databases
City Data

31. http://citysdk.waag.org/apihttp://citysdk.waag.org/

32. http://citysdk.waag.org/map

33. Embrace Civic Hacking

34. Cases
• BAG viewer
• RT mobility data
• Parking API
• Orphaned Bikes
• Tourism in Amsterdam
• Emergency services
• City Dashboard
• Smart Citizen Kits

35. http://dev.citysdk.waag.org/buildings/

36. http://dev.citysdk.waag.org/visualisation/

37. Amsterdam
Barcelona
Helsinki
Lisboa
Istanbul
Manchester
Rome
Lamia

38. Smart Parking Reducing Mobility
http://www.parkshark.nl/

39. http://bomenapp.nl/

41. Smart Citizen Kit

42. CitySDK Linked Data - Users
• More than 13 parties use the ‘endpoints’
• NL implementation is used by the Greater Amsterdam region;
Amsterdam Economic Board; Infrastructure,Traffic &
Transportations; Glimworm, 2Cool Monkeys.
• CitySDK Association coming up

43. Applications
• Tree Spotter - Amsterdam (iOS, Android)
• Citymarker - read and write data (GitHub)
• Traze - video: vimeo.com/74889947 & www.trazeapp.com/
• Now: nearest available public transport citysdk.waag.org/now
• Buildings map: by year of construction -citysdk.waag.org/buildings
• Open Data Globe citysdk.waag.org/visualisation
• ReisRadar (Social Travel App, iOS, Android): reisradarapp.waag.org

44. Pointers
• Design Rules for Smarter Cities
http://waag.org/nl/blog/design-rules-smarter-cities
• Smart Citizens Publication
http://futureeverything.org/publications/smart-citizens/
• CitySDK Mobility API
http://citysdk.waag.org/api
• Open Design Now
http://opendesignnow.org/
• Smart Citizen Kit
http://www.smartcitizen.me/
• Apps for Europe - Turning Data into Business
http://www.appsforeurope.eu/

45. If You Can’t Open It, You Don’t Own It

46. Piet Heinkade 181 a
1019 HC Amsterdam
waag.org
Thanks!
Frank Kresin - @kresin