Technology in Society 61 (2020) 101229

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Technology in Society
journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/techsoc

Hyperconnected, receptive and do-it-yourself city. An investigation into the

European “imaginary” of crowdsourcing for urban governance
� *, Filippo Corsini, Marco Frey
Chiara Certoma
DIRPOLIS Institute and Institute of Management, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This paper critically explores the construction and diffusion of the socio-technical imaginary of crowdsourcing
Socio-technical imaginary for public governance in Europe via a quali-quantitative analysis of academic publications, research and inno­
Digital social innovation vation projects funded by the European Commission (EC) and local initiatives. Building upon the increasing
Crowdsourcing
narrative of digital social participation that describes crowdsourcing processes as short ways towards demo­
European commission
Public governance
cratisation of public decision-making processes, our research describes the trends and threats associated with the
Participatory processes “hyperconnected city” imaginary advanced by (part of) scholarly research and EC policy documents and projects.
Urban sustainability We show how, while these last describe digital-supported participation processes as (at least potentially) able to
bootstrap an open governance agenda, local urban initiatives suggest the need to question this technology-
optimistic imaginary. A critical analysis of crowdsourcing for public governance prototyped and piloted in
some European cities makes it evident that at local level, alternative imaginaries are emerging. We describe them
in this paper as the “receptive city” (often adopted by public institutions and administration), and the “do-it-
yourself city” (referring to the critical perspective of (digital) social activists) imaginaries, both emerging from
local-based experiences and debates; and clarify their convergence and divergence how these differs from the
above-mentioned “hyperconnected city” imaginary prefigured by EC guidelines. The conclusive section further
expands the analysis prefiguring future research possibilities promises in terms of local experiences influencing
the future internet for society and digital agenda for Europe.

1. Complexify the imaginary of crowdsourcing
The concept of “social imaginary” broadly adopted in social sciences
as an heuristic tool to refer and examine common understandings and
practices of society constitution [109]. Socio-technical imaginaries are
defined as the “collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly
performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared un­
derstandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through,
and supportive of, advances in science and technology” [1]; p. 4). The
ephemeral world of digital social participation seems to quite contrast
with the idea of a stable process that can be codified and institutional­
ised; and that is, therefore, able to nurture the emergence and diffusion
of associated socio-technical imaginaries [2]. Nevertheless, it is nowa­
days clear that, despite the volatile and fast-evolving character of
web-based innovation, the general understanding of interactive digital
technologies as tools for allowing public participation in science, busi­
ness and politics entails some degree of programmable future vision.
Amongst the others, crowdsourcing processes are often reputed as
particularly effective for harvesting data, knowledge, suggestions and
preferences from citizens [3,4] and, as such, they is regarded as a
promising form of digital social participation [5]. Hence, we particularly
focus in the present paper on public crowdsourcing initiatives to
describe what issues these particularly apply to and what socio-technical
discourses they are associated with; how it eventually materialises in
local contexts; and how the related socio-technical imaginaries emerged
in different communities (including scholarly research and
macro-regional institutions, local governments and citizen activists).
The contribute of our paper resides in the identification and comparison

This project has received funding from the EU Horizon 2020 Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Grant, n.740191. We believe that peer collaboration is the core of scientific
research, and every work elaborated in collaboration is more than the sum of the single contributions. However, as some academic systems requires an explicit
mention of the individual contribution in every collective work, we declare that sections 1 (part of), 2, 5 (part of), 6 and 7 (part of) shall be considered due to Chiara
Certom�a, while sections 3, 4, 5 (part of) shall be due to Filippo Corsini; and 1 (part of) and 7 (part of) shall be considered due to Marco Frey.
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: chiara.certoma@santannapisa.it (C. Certom� a), filippo.corsini@santannapisa.it (F. Corsini), marco.frey@santannapisa.it (M. Frey).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2020.101229
Received 8 April 2019; Received in revised form 31 October 2019; Accepted 26 January 2020
Available online 29 January 2020
0160-791X/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
C. Certom�
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of the multiple urban imaginaries underlying the different social nar­
ratives and practical implementation of crowdsourcing processes; and
investigate their co-existence, convergences and divergences in order to
suggest new interpretative lines in digital urban governance research.
To this end, we performed a quali-quantitative analysis of scientific
literature and research & innovation (R&I) projects founded by the
European Commissions (EC) via bibliographic mapping, data-mining
and content-analysis methodologies. These describe the emergence of
the broad interest for public governance-related applications of crowd­
sourcing, with reference to the most commonly addressed issues; and the
social and political inspirational values that supported the diffusion of
the “hyperconnected city” imaginary. Specifically, data on EC-funded
projects show that sustainability concerns in the urban context are
those attracting more the public attention; and, thus, produced in time a
broad range of narratives, visions and rhetoric elaborations. When
devoting our attention to local crowdsourcing projects advanced in
European cities by local administrations or non-institutional social ac­
tors (including citizens groups, CSOs and NGOs, digital activist and so­
cial entrepreneurs) we particularly noticed these often deal with
punctual issues and spatially limited contexts. Here, socio-technical
considerations about potentialities and threats of crowdsourcing in
urban governance are further transferred into different and often over­
lapping imaginaries we named as “receptive city” and “do-it-yourself
city”. Far from being a mere socio-cultural construction with no effec­
tuality, these can have a performative effect [6] in shaping the city
functioning, and, thus, can be intentionally mobilised for projecting
future vision of the good and bad.
In the conclusive section, we detect significant trends and discuss
how researchers, policymakers, digital entrepreneurs and social in­
novators are further forging and deploying the crowdsourcing imaginary
in Europe; and we elaborate on the peculiar traits that characterise
urban governance-oriented crowdsourcing initiatives together with the
criticalities these bring about.
2. Crowdsouring in urban governance: complementing
enthusiastic with critical perspectives
One of the reference definitions of crowdsourcing has been provided
by Ref. [7] as “a type of participative online activity in which an indi­
vidual, an institution, a non-profit organisation, or company proposes to
a group of individuals of varying knowledge, heterogeneity, and num­
ber, via a flexible open call, the voluntary undertaking of a task” (p.9).
While originally referring to an innovative business model [8,9],
crowdsourcing has now been broadly accepted as an appropriate process
for voluntary open collaboration towards societal challenges, proposed
and managed by public institutions or associations for the public benefit
[10–12]. However, when entered the public sphere the very same label
of crowdsourcing as been adopted to mean a large number of different
processes that rely on citizens’ technological agency exerted via the use
of personal digital tools for collective peer production technologies (e.g.
do-it-yourself technologies), for recording, measuring and reporting on
the conditions of the external environments (e.g. sensing technologies,
citizen science initiatives) [13]; for sharing opinion, ideas and experi­
ences; for elaborating data (e.g. big-data analysis applications) [14]; and
for creating open innovation (e.g. open-source software, collaborative
contents or multiple content aggregators) [15]. Through the diffusion of
personal ICTs which allowed people to volunteer in data gathering
processes via mapping and sharing applications, crowdsourcing
appeared in the public eye as the ultimate witchcraft able to provide a
new (virtual and, thus, potentially infinite) space for participation,
collective decision-making, peer-to-peer collaboration and social inno­
vation. Therefore, crowdsourcing has often been enthusiastically
welcomed as the appropriate paradigmatic model to stimulate citizens’
interest in public discussion [16] via the provision of catchy and
game-like applications for information gathering, large-scale data
analysis and ideation solutions [17,18], problem-solving and
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Technology in Society 61 (2020) 101229
preferences expression apps [5]. These last fuelled the emergence of an
imaginary of democratic, non-hierarchical and decentralised future
decision-making processes based on the access potentialities provided
by the web infrastructure [19–22].
By leveraging on the belief – already advanced in most scientific
literature – that people’s participation and empowerment through
dedicated participatory technologies may have a positive effect in
addressing the challenges of a “smart, sustainable and inclusive growth”
[23], crowdsourcing is often described in EC policy documents as a
promising way to increase engagement and collaboration in public
governance (see Annex 3). Building upon Lisbon’s Strategy [24] and the
European Strategy for Development [25,26], the aim of providing an
“enabling welfare state” [27] supported the EC investments in social
innovation initiatives, on the claim that fostering better conditions of
life is a participatory goal that cannot be reached by just working for the
citizens but only with the citizens (see the European Citizens Crowd­
sourcing project or the European Observatory on Crowdsourcing). This
roots in the long-lasting commitment of EC with the definition of smart
approaches to face societal and environmental challenges with investing
in both social capital and ICT infrastructures [28]. Along this line, Eu­
ropean research primarily focused on the application of crowdsourcing
in government [17,29,30] with reference to its actual or potential impact
on traditional policy-making (e.g. political and economic decision, law
reform, participatory budgeting, petition sites), as in the famous ex­
amples of The Finnish Experiment with digitally crowdsourced laws [31]
or the Icelandic crowdsourcing the new constitution [32]. For quite
some time, applications of crowdsourcing in governance remained un­
explored [33,34]. The experience in the smart city domain teaches how
a convergence amongst concept, its theorisation, its rules and its
implementation is fundamental [35]. Therefore, EC devoted its attention
toward the creation of appropriate processes for letting citizens have
their say about public issues in other than traditional political arenas,
with the aim of creating a democratic, inclusive and engaging society via
digital governance processes (see par.4). As a matter of fact, the proven
inadequacy of traditional solutions brought forth by the market, and the
inconsistencies and inefficacy of traditional public policy instruments at
the national level [36,37] represent the justification of EC’s support of
civil society initiatives in response to pressing socio-environmental
challenges of migration, unemployment, poverty, ageing, and climate
change and local development [38,39]. Therefore, the imaginary of
open governance and digital democracy [40] has been associated with a
systemic change perspective [3,36,41]. Notably, the European Digital
Agenda [42] shows how, in the praise of social innovation, the European
Commission considers crowdsourcing as an enabling factor for reshap­
ing the conventional interaction routines between institutions, research
and civil society actors [43–45]. Following the Review of the EU Sus­
tainable Development Strategy [46], which acknowledges the crucial role
of social innovation for improving inclusiveness, accessibility and
equality [47,48], EC dedicated specific policies, programmes and ini­
tiatives (e.g. ERDF, ESF, INTERREG and URBACT programmes) to
address emerging issues through pioneering tools and processes able to
produce changes in social behavioural patterns (see Ref. [28] for an
extended description).
Concordantly, a growing number of researchers, describe crowd­
sourcing processes as facilitators of new governance models charac­
terised by distributed technological agency [50,51]. Most of this
research ideally connects crowdsourcing with the magmatic world of
digital social innovation [3], co-creation (Prahalad [52], open innova­
tion [53] and users’ innovation initiatives [54], while in terms of con­
tent, these are described as appropriate support for addressing cogent
social issues [3].
Nevertheless, the integration of social and technical aspects in digital
social participation bring about issues of social acceptance, use and
transformation of technological tools to fit with specific aims or needs,
and concerns about their transformative power of daily practices. This
deeply impacts on the elaboration of social imaginary that, while “less
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explicit and accountable than policy agendas, and unlike narratives,

Cij
[…] more directly serve explanatory or justificatory purposes.” [55] Sij ¼
wi wj
p.716). The justificatory aspect of collective imaginary is particularly
relevant when it provides the base for policy priorities’ and funds’
where cij denotes the number of co-occurrences of items i and j and
destinations and when the reliability of particular imaginaries is con­
where wi and wj denote either the total number of occurrences of items i
tested. As a matter of fact, digital technologies actually have a strong
and j or the total number of co-occurrences of these items. Then, VOS­
impact on the materiality itself and its meaning, and they bring along a
viewer determines the location of items on a map by minimising a
number of moral implications exactly because “technologies themselves
weighted sum of the squared distances between all pairs of items. The
can act as physical forces that constrain action or enhance an experi­
resulting maps illustrate the relations between relevant terms. More
ence” [55] p. 716). Their application is, thus, never logistically smooth
specifically, the words that appear in larger fonts are those occurring
neither politically neutral as some enthusiastic descriptions suggest,
most frequently across the selected publications, whereas the distance
including some of the academic literature and the EC’s perspective. As a
between words distributed on the map is an indication of their co-
consequence of this recognition, the pervasiveness of the early
occurrence – the smaller the distance between two terms, the higher
technology-optimist perspective is complemented today with a number
their co-occurrence.
of sceptical voices that warn today against the “stupidity of the crowd”
Building upon the results of the bibliometric research, we
[56,57], the “technological fetishism” [58,59] and the dark-side of the
approached the review of grey literature (i.e. policy papers, guidelines,
“digital turn” in public policy [60–63]. These critical contributions
reports, …) produced by EC and the relevant projects that have been
principally revolve around the different ways in which the deployment
funded. All selected documents were read independently and iteratively
of digital participation technologies may impact on the society, i.e. by
discussed by the authors, thereby ensuring reliability through consensus
allowing or impeding peculiar, value-laden and biased forms of semantic
and minimisation of bias. A worksheet was designed in order to perform
and material interventions on society [64], and through the circulation
the content analysis and to gather specific information from each source
of specific imaginaries.
and summary tables of data obtained were assembled. The analysis of
European projects was grounded on a search of the project reports that
3. A quali-quantitative investigation methodology
include pertinent keywords, such as “crowdsourcing”, “crowdsource”,
“crowd-sourcing”, “crowd sourcing”, “crowd source”, as well as changes
In order to investigate how the imaginary about crowdsourcing for
in the order of the words. This step of the research was used to
public governance emerged in different public communities, what issues
corroborate significant patterns emerging from bibliometric research.
and socio-technical narratives it is associated with and how it materi­
Based on findings emerging from a bibliometric analysis of the aca­
alises, we combined the results of a set of quali-quantitative investiga­
demic literature, we explored the imaginary of public crowdsourcing
tion methodologies.
produced by local administrations, citizens’ associations and social en­
We used a bibliometric methodology to explore the imaginary pro­
trepreneurs, and its materialisation in local projects (Section 4) which
duced in scientific literature. Such approach has already been widely
represent the newest field of academic research. We used Carrot2 [70],
adopted in many research fields [65,66].
an open-source search results clustering engine which is able to auto­
The intent of the method is to develop a visual representation of the
matically organise internet search results into thematic categories. In
connections amongst several items of interest [67]. A computer algo­
particular, it analyses and clusters the content of up to 200 websites
rithm examines co-occurrences of terms in the titles and abstracts of
resulting from a precise web search conducted with the Google search
several research papers in order to measure the relatedness of areas of
engine. In our case, we decided to cluster the 200 most important web
research within the crowdsourcing literature. We identified the
pages (i.e. those appearing in the first 200 places in the Google ranking).
geographical boundaries for the analysis and only selected papers pub­
Carrot2 uses the algorithm Lingo, in order to capture thematic threads in
lished in international peer-reviewed journals [68] by researchers
a search result, discover groups of related documents and describe the
affiliated to European universities and research institutions. This obvi­
subject of these groups in a meaningful way. The Lingo algorithm is
ously does not mean that the geographical area of interest falls within
quite complex and we prefer to refer to the original source to not missing
the boundaries of the European Community. However, it allows us to
out any relevant information [71]. In consideration of the massive
appreciate how crowdsourcing is talked about in our geographical area
amount of heterogeneous results obtained from the internet search (see
of investigation. Subsequently, we followed a multi-step procedure to
Section 3 for methodology description) – most of which referring to
identify a comprehensive dataset of scientific manuscripts. Scopus
crowdsourcing application for private business or informatics de­
browser, an academic citation indexing and search service, was adopted
velopments – we complemented the controlling keyword “crowdsourc­
for the construction of a representative database of literature. The
ing” with the word “public governance”.
analysis of scientific literature was grounded on a search of papers
Subsequently, we focused on crowdsourcing or crowdsourcing-kind
including pertinent keywords, such as “crowdsourcing”, “crowdsource”,
projects at the urban scale supported and funded by networks of cities,
“crowd-sourcing”, “crowd sourcing”, “crowd source”, as well as changes
local institutions, private associations or civil society organisations
in the order of the words. Papers had to match the selection criteria at
(CSOs). The resulting cases (see Fig. 6), although not exhaustive, provide
least once in the title, abstract or body of the manuscript. This procedure
clear indications for our research question. In order to retrieve them we
produced a total of 723 articles in peer-reviewed journals matching the
performed a manual selection of results on the basis of our best under­
keyword criteria.
standing. Two main factors prevented us from adopting automatic
The analysis of the representative database of literature (Section 3)
harvesting processes. First, crowdsourcing platforms are in general
was conducted through a bibliometric map approach. Such approach
implemented in local languages which, moreover, often adopt catchy
allowed the production of a visual representation of terms occurring
local words for attracting citizens’ participation rather than the word
multiple times in titles and abstracts. We decided to use the VOS algo­
“crowdsourcing”. Second, even when English descriptions are offered,
rithm mapping technique implemented in the software VOSviewer [69]
the word “crowdsourcing” is rarely mentioned, although the projects
to produce the maps. VOS algorithms make use of the so-called associ­
might present all the characters of a crowdsourcing initiative. Therefore,
ation strength method (e.g. Van Eck & Waltman, 2007; Van Eck et al.,
it is important to signal that, when talking about crowdsourcing, we
2006). According to Van Eck and Waltman [69]; based on this method,
actually refer to a broader set of “crowdsourcing-kind” initiatives. These
the similarity sij between the items i and j is calculated as:
include participatory projects relying on the use of “crowdsourcing tools
(e.g. smartphone software, blogs, wikis, social bookmarking

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applications, social networks, peer-to-peer software) and processes (e.g.
social mapping, the collection of volunteered geographic information,
geo-referenced social networking, co-designing, cloud processing, etc.)
to enable multiple web-based problem-solving” [33]; p. 93) by a large
group of citizens. The following sections present the results obtained via
the application of above-described methodologies aimed at analysing
the spread and the domains of applications of crowdsourcing processes
in public governance in the domain of EC-funded R&I projects (Section
4) and local projects (Section 5). A schematic representation of the
proposed methodology is shown in Fig. 1.
4. The European commission imaginary of “hyperconnected
city”
The EC’s perspective on crowdsourcing roots and is on its turn
broadly described in the European scholarly literature. Based on the
analysis of 723 scientific papers (see Section 2 for methodology
description), we produced a term map visually representing the trends
and preferred topics for crowdsourcing application in scientific research
produced by European universities and research institutions. In this map
each item is indicated according to a colour key identifying the cluster to
which it belongs.
The blue cluster refers to the participatory aspect of crowdsourcing,
including keywords, such as “citizens”, “citizen science”, “users” and
“participation”, while the red cluster focuses on the kind of processes
activated by crowdsourcing as a collective intelligence enabler for data
collection and organisation. Innovation processes and engagement
emerge as charactering keywords in the imaginary as mapped in Fig. 2,
while keywords such as “crowd” or “platforms” are obviously too gen­
eral to be taken into consideration. The green cluster mostly groups
topics linked to crowdsourcing tools and processes in local government,
administration and governance, enlightening also the most important
connected issues, such as transparency, corruption and sustainability.
A deeper investigation of the trend of academic research conducted
by European scholars confirms that, from the quasi-exclusive use in the
private sector, computer science applications and business, crowd­
sourcing progressively entered the public governance. This tendency is
clearly represented in Fig. 1 that shows scientific literature evidence
based on a temporal-based analysis of the keywords of 723 scientific
articles and presenting the progressive shifting of crowdsourcing’s
principal domain of application in time.
The most frequently used keywords in the crowdsourcing research
field per year show that the scientific literature first explored crowd­
sourcing tools as a collective intelligence tool to gather data from the
public, and for using information to complete business-related tasks by
companies and organisations in general. From 2014, research on
crowdsourcing started to include crowdsourcing as a supporting
Fig. 1. Schematic representation of the proposed methodology used in the research.
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Technology in Society 61 (2020) 101229
application for the labour market. Later on, researchers documented
crowdsourcing tools and processes especially connected with mapping
practices and geographic information systems, data collection method­
ologies used for feeding databases and information-gathering processes
supporting spatial planning. Most recently (2016–2017), new research
areas emerged with the aim to explore crowdsourcing as a tool for
collaborative decision-making processes and crowdsourcing for urban
governance and citizen science (2016 and 2017).
The progressive shift towards the public sphere corresponded to a
change of imaginary of crowdsourcing, which subsequently attracted
the interest of different social communities from actors operating in the
business world to those working in (or on) the public sphere, as dis­
cussed in section 2. At the same time, the new imaginary of crowd­
sourcing for public rather than private interests catalysed different
issues to be tackled, most of them radically diverging from the original
interest for private businesses and rather attached to services, accessi­
bility and information for and from citizens for public good. This has
been exemplary mobilised by the EC’s commitment towards promoting
public crowdsourcing processes. In order to appreciate its emergence,
we reviewed grey literature produced by R&I projects conducted in the
last 10 years inside the two main instruments for funding research in
Europe, namely Horizon 2020 and Seventh Framework Programme pro­
jects (Fig. 3).
This process identified 97 different projects dealing with crowd­
sourcing issues, the main themes and the spatial contexts where those
projects were conducted. The aim was to explore from a different
perspective than the scholarly one, what topics have been focused on by
research-oriented projects founded by EC Annex 1. Results of this
investigation are presented in Fig. 4.
Data suggest that projects dealing with sustainability issues represent
the vast majority of crowdsourcing-related projects, accounting for
almost 25% of the total projects. Moreover, the urban context emerged
here as a privileged locus for experimenting crowdsourcing processes in
governance. Projects connecting different stakeholders on an area-based
rationale, where online platforms provide organisational logic for data-
based and awareness-raising initiatives are referred to as of primary
importance in piloting experiments in Europe. As shown in Fig. 4, more
than 60% of the overall reviewed projects were or are conducted in
urban contexts, and 56% of sustainability-related projects are carried
out in urban contexts. Sustainability-focused crowdsourcing projects
(for a detailed list, see Annex 1) deal with a wide range of forefront
topics in Europe, such as sustainable consumerism and green economy
(Asset, EU-InnovatE); food production, biodiversity and urban ecology
(Capsella, Saving Food 2.0, WILDTHING, Bioeconomy COBWEB,
ConGRESS); air pollution and decarbonisation (Captor, DecarboNet,
HackAIR, North State); mobility (Crowd4Roads); community-based dig­
ital innovation for sustainable models (Make-IT, p2pvalue, Socratic);
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Fig. 2. What scholarly research says crowdsourcing is about.

Fig. 3. From private to public governance: the most important shifting of crowdsourcing imaginary documented in scientific literature.

water (POWER, CORDIS); health (EXPOSOMICS); participatory land­
scape and planning (HERCULES, ECODISTR-ICT); and natural disasters
(BEYOND, REAKT, PICTURES). It is evident, that, while in scientific
research associated with crowdsourcing (Fig. 1) sustainability only
emerges as a subfield of interest, in EC R&I projects sustainability stands
out as the most popular area of application (see, for instance, the pro­
jects EveryAware, Citizen Cyberlab, Citizen Sensing and Environmental
Practice). Amongst the others, a number of Collective Awareness Platforms
for Sustainability and Social Innovation (CAPS) projects designed and
tested digital participation platforms pursuing social innovation
outcomes (P2PVALUE, CATALYST, CHEST, D-CENT), which are ori­
ented towards increasing sustainability (DECARBONET) and social ser­
vices (CAP4ACCESS). Along this line, EC’s emerging imaginary of a
“hyperconnected city” where crowdsourcing processes contribute to the
realisation of a technologically empowered, sustainability-oriented so­
ciety, is clearly described by the Green Digital Charter initiative, origi­
nally launched by the EUROCITIES network and then supported by the
H2020 programme. This builds upon the EU 20/20/20 Energy and
Climate Targets and the Digital Single Market, the Urban Agenda and the
European Commission’s Investment Plan for Europe - Juncker Plan policy

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Fig. 4. Topics and spatial contexts of research projects founded by EC on crowdsourcing.

framework by claiming that quality of life in the European cities can be
improved via the use of digital solutions and an increase in the role of
citizens. The need to create a strong connection between con­
ceptualisation of the crowdsourcing for public, the rules for its appli­
cation and the pilot implementations finds in the EC innovation and
digital society policy a clear expression [35]. In line with the European
Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC) and
Horizon 2020 Lighthouse Projects, the Green Digital Charter encourages to
deploy an integrated web infrastructure and develop online open urban
platforms with the “objective of expanding the use of digital technolo­
gies that improve the life of […] citizens and address the challenges of
growth, sustainability and resilience” (Green Digital Charter).
5. From the “receptive city” to the “do-it-yourself city”.
Crowdsourcing in the local actors’ practices and imaginaries
Regardless of its liminality in the scientific research’s imaginary, the
urban context works as a catalyser of collective visions about potential

Fig. 5. Clusters grouping of the first 200 Google web pages focusing on urban aspects of crowdsourcing.

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future scenarios experimented in R&I projects funded by the EC [33].
The city context allows experimenting innovative governance models
[72–74] as the relatively compact spatial dimension of urban environ­
ment makes it possible to clearly define the potential area of impact of
collective decisions, the crowds to be interrogated and the potential
effects of innovative initiatives [75]. Nevertheless, the use of crowd­
sourcing in urban governance is not always easy to investigate. Cases are
often based on the application of specific tools or participatory plat­
forms, whose functioning processes are not always clearly labelled as
crowdsourcing. Thus, we approached the imaginary of crowdsourcing
for public governance produced by local actors (including local gov­
ernments, citizens’ associations, social innovators and digital entrepre­
neurs) by starting from a general overview on web data. The web-mining
and data-clustering process via Carrot2 software (see sec.2) resulted in a
honeycomb cluster map (Fig. 5) showing that – apart from generic re­
sults, which are expectable when broad-searching the web (including,
for instance, words such as “people”, “projects”, “mobile crowdsourc­
ing”, “crowdsourcing urban data” etc.) – the most relevant contents
includes planning (and design as a variation), collaboration and inno­
vation, and urban sustainability governance as the only semantically
relevant fields of crowdsourcing application in public governance. The
visual representation of the topics/words most frequently associated
with crowdsourcing and retrieved from the first 200 indexed web paged
on Google is not intended to introduce new taxonomies (as many of the
clusters actually refer to the very same research domain, such as “urban
planning”, “crowdsourcing urban data” and “crowdsourcing urban
data”), but just to make evident the prominence of urban-related issues
in the general conception and use of crowdsourcing.
When approaching local practices from a critical social perspective,
it appears immediately clear how, against the relatively compact, pro­
gressive and aimed-for-better imaginary of public crowdsourcing
feeding the “hyperconnected city” imaginary, the local performances of
crowdsourcing generate different and somehow contrasting approaches.
To explore them we focus on performances of crowdsourcing as this
“helps reposition science and technology as key sites for the constitution
of […] social imaginaries” [1]; p.14) and tentatively materialise
“collectively held and performed vision of the futures (or of resistances
against undesirable ones) […] attainable through, and supportive of,
advances in science and technology” [1]; p.28). Two different – still
often interplaying-approaches have been detected as characterising
local application of public crowdsourcing processes; and leading to the
Fig. 6. The space of local crowdsourcing initiatives organised on the base of degree of citizens’ involvement (ranging from collaboration to engagement) and
promoters’ kind (ranging from public to private subjects), with some examples.
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Technology in Society 61 (2020) 101229
creation of the imaginaries we labelled as “receptive city” and “do-i­
t-yourself city”. These are produced by the practical engagement with
situated projects promoted by different kind social actors, from public to
private ones (public administrations; CSOs, NGOs and local associations;
companies or practitioners playing a proactive role in public gover­
nance). At the same time citizens’ involvement in crowdsourcing pro­
cesses ranges from more passive processes (such as data provision,
gathering and collection), to more active forms of commitment (such as
idea suggestions and engagement). The following description provides
examples of them (those are fully listed in Annex 2).
5.1. Practices and meaning of the “receptive city” imaginary
The first approach is exemplified by the digital interaction systems
used in public crowdsourcing that are designed as means for reporting
social, infrastructural or organisational problems (e.g. fixing holes in the
streets, redesigning traffic routes in a neighbourhood, securing aban­
doned buildings, restoring green areas, etc.) (see Fig. 6, from “data
collection” to “consultation” areas). The tight link between tools and
users makes it doubtful whether the intentionality of the process is
defined by the tool itself (embedding the designer’s aims, the technical
limitations, the material and logistic constraints, the interconnectivity of
the Internet of Things (IoT), as well as the peculiar logic of artificial
intelligence) or by the user’s aims. The matter of concern data are
collected about is not, in these cases, suggested by citizens, but rather
pre-given by the promoter of the crowdsourcing platform, as exempli­
fied by the MK:Smart project advanced by Milton Keynes city adminis­
tration (UK). It is not rare, however, for private companies to also issue
data collection initiatives, as in the Citying platform, raising questions
about both the real public character of the initiatives and the final goals.
In all of these cases, which can be regarded as passive forms of partici­
pation, citizens become an “extension” of the tools they use, players in
the technology-aided process they stepped into to detect and document
problems in need of intervention, working as “living sensors” for
recording data about air quality, traffic and mobility, consumption be­
haviours and similar, or taking part in closed-question surveys. In other
cases, crowdsourcing projects require citizens’ judgement about what
actions are advisable to be taken by the local administration via
information-harvesting processes that deploy the potentiality of IoT, by
allowing personal IC devices to interact with a central platform via
dedicated software applications. For instance, the open-source report-
C. Certom�
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mapping software called FixMyStreet allows the creation of globally
widespread supporting platforms that can be customised in different
locations for citizens to map and report data they want to build their
claims on. Crowdsourcing platforms are also used for collecting funds
(see Fig. 6, “fundraising” area). These initiatives go under the name of
crowdfounding and are increasingly adopted by local administration to
attract project ideas and co-found those gathering more private dona­
tions (e.g. Specehive or Crowdfunding.gent promoted by Gent City Coun­
cil. Along this line, it is equally common to find public administrations
or CSOs organising contests for community-based projects proposed by
citizens with the goal of planning or managing specific areas or services
in the city. Significant examples are the Prize2theFuture contest imple­
mented by the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham and devel­
oped by Idea Crossing company in order “to leverage Internet technology
and source creative ideas for a city development project” (Prize2­
theFuture). Crowdsourced contests are often included in participatory
budget frameworks, as was the case with the BurgerBudget call in Gent
for citizens-driven projects uploaded in a public portal where all the
citizens are allowed to upload their own proposals and vote for the
preferred one to get funds. Similarly, in Paris, the Madame la Maire J’ai
une Id�ee platform has been provided by the city council to harvest ideas
for a participatory budget, allocating 100 million euros to winning
projects. Slightly different are crowdsourcing platforms used as
consultation sites, as in the Imaginons Paris Demain case, where citizens
have the opportunity to express their opinions on already existing (and
sometimes contested) urban development projects. Moreover, crowd­
sourcing platforms are also provided by local administrations and in­
stitutions as entering points for lay citizens in the policymaking
processes, for instance by providing their opinion about political parties’
electoral programmes or legislative initiatives (e.g. the Citizens’ Initiative
Act, designed by the Open Ministry, a non-profit organisation based in
Helsinki). In all of these cases, the imaginary of crowdsourcing as
enabler [76] of a “receptive city” characterises the initiatives proposed
by public administration, which often links them with smart city nar­
ratives or the more technology-sceptic approach of a people-oriented
city [77]. The reliance on the technical expertise of private com­
panies, most often large companies, which provide information infra­
structure or digital developers, is of vital importance in the
materialisation of the imaginary of a “receptive city” as foreseen by
several local administrations in Europe.
5.2. Practices and meaning of the “do-it-yourself city” imaginary
While signalling the relevance of public-private partnerships in the
creation of a political vision of the urban future and the drafting of the
urban agenda of material intervention on both the hardware and soft­
ware of the city [78], the tight link and often fuzzy boundary between
communication and politics, together with the power acquired by the
ICT service providers, attract the criticism of the idea itself being a
product of major IT companies, rather than its citizens [79,80]. As a
matter of fact, despite the plea for public participation, transparency and
openness, the corporate storytelling of a smart hyperconnected city [81]
is often surprisingly resonant with the policy programme of the
administration whose digital participation processes are appropriated
by private companies and turned into economic transaction practices
[82]. Therefore, if we shift over on the line reporting different degrees of
public commitment in Fig. 6, we end up with approaching more active
forms of online participation. Here crowdsourcing processes for public
governance are designed and promoted by social entrepreneurs and
civic associations for raising innovative ideas in a digital suggestions
box, as exemplified by the CitizenLab or PublicLab toolkit. This latter, for
instance, is aimed at citizens’ consultation and has been adopted by a
number of cities in Denmark, Belgium, Germany and France. Again, the
platform Otwarta Warszawa managed by the social company Million You
in Warsaw, collects people’s ideas on urban development, in collabo­
ration with the Warsaw city administration (who can take the final
8
Technology in Society 61 (2020) 101229
decision about the implementation of emerging proposals). A similar
project is OurMK promoted by the Open University in cooperation with
the Milton Keynes administration. With the declared aim of accelerating
ICT-led urban innovation towards sustainability issues, OurMK projects
call for citizen problem-solving based on ICT devices and processes, by
offering funds or mentoring as a reward for the realisation of the pro­
posed project itself. A further significant example is provided by the
Better Reykjavik platform connecting Reykjavik City Council with citi­
zens, whose main concerns can be prioritised via dedicated development
projects for up to 1.9 million euros. Thus, while not radically subversive
(such as in the case of social hacking or digital boycotting initiatives),
the engagement projects exemplified in Fig. 6 are spontaneous initia­
tives from the ground up [15] that focus on urban regeneration, sharing
economy (see Peerby, Reusit, Freecycle), commons (see CommonsGent)
and collaborative planning (see Impossible living).
The technology-oriented imaginary of a “receptive city” is in these
cases slowly replaced by a more critical imaginary of a people-led “do-it-
yourself city”, where “imagination of desirable and undesirable futures
correlate, tacitly or explicitly, with the obverse – share fears of harms
that might be incurred through invention and innovation, or of course
the failure to innovate” [1]; p. 6). Here, the dividing line between uto­
pian and dystopian becomes incredibly thin and from “hyperconnected
city” optimist description of digital social participation processes as
empowering mechanism creating a more cohesive and green society,
through the “receptive city” imaginary of local administration focused
on more practical and daily problems and entangled in the game of
contrasting forces of public vocation and private interests, we end up
with the citizen-driven critical perspective of the “do-it-yourself city”.
This reverses the opaquely positive imaginary of the “hyperconnected
city” into Huxleyan fears of a society of (cyber)control, limitation of
freedom and social dissensus pigeonholing, where people’s ideas, en­
ergy and imagination are co-opted and exploited.
6. Confronting the diverse imaginaries of crowdsourcing for
urban governance
Our investigation leads us to investigate the different points of views
with convergent and divergent elements related to each perspective in
the Table 1, further commented below (see Table 2).
Concerning the topics crowdsourcing is applied to, there are no
significant differences from the EU level to the local level. This generally
refers to mobility regulation, spatial planning, biodiversity and green
areas management or energy efficiency in urban areas. However, EU-
funded projects (Section 4) often allow in-depth explorations of a sin­
gle issue, while local projects rather provide general platforms that can
be used for tackling a broad range of issues.
Moreover, while EU-funded research-oriented projects often rely on
the collaboration of researchers (whose technological skills are in gen­
eral fairly high), local projects often adopt a limited set of tools and, in
consideration of the need to involve a broad range of non-technology-
educated citizens, opt for user-friendly software. In these cases, prac­
tical elements, including technical feasibility of the intervention, avail­
ability of technologies, social acceptance, capacity to gather the crowd
and to mobilise interests and energy, economic investments and the
ability to create a widely endorsed narrative, are of major importance. In
fact, local crowdsourcing processes are in general punctual and context
based as promoters are willing to invest resources in cogent issues that
attract a wide interest at local level.
Nevertheless, what actually represents a landmark difference
Table 1
European programmes investigated.
ID Framework Programme Period
FP7 Seventh 2007–2013
FP8 Horizon 2020 (Eighth) 2014–2020
C. Certom�
a et al.
Table 2
Comparing different imaginaries and adoption of crowdsourcing for public governance.
Imaginary Scale and type of project, Topics and kind of
technological readiness (TR) platform
“Hyperconnected EU; Urban sustainability-
city” Research-oriented projects, related issues;
software development, processes Single-issue oriented
piloting; platform
High TR
“Receptive city” Local (urban or sub-urban); Urban sustainability-
Context-based problem-solving related issues;
software; Multiple-issues
Low TR oriented platform
“Do-it-yourself
city”
between the use of crowdsourcing for public governance at the macro-
regional and local scale are the motivations, visions and narratives
embedded in different imaginaries. Crowdsourcing is described in EU
policy guidelines – particularly those connecting to social innovation –
as a potentially powerful means to address governance challenges. The
stress posed by international institutions on the need to create a
collaborative environment between promoters of the process and users
[83] is in fact justified by the stated belief that “the role of ICT-enabled
innovation in the public sector and the evolving approaches of institu­
tional re-design that are affecting the multiple dimensions of gover­
nance” [84]. Such an optimist imaginary on public crowdsourcing
advanced by (part of) scientific research refrained in the EC position
papers, regulations and guidelines prefigures the creation of a common
(virtual) space of dialogue where heterogenous actors are gathered
around a table to negotiate common matters of concern and address the
appropriate administration or governing body to tackle them [85]. On
the local level, data gathering, expression of preferences, voting,
advising and consulting processes are often promoted by local admin­
istrations, or stimulated by local associations, organisations and NGOs
(see, for instance Ref. [86], as part of a wider campaigning or lobbying
activity. Here, crowdsourcing is understood and adopted as a tool for
complementing and expanding the possibility of face-to-face participa­
tion, i.e. for integrating online and offline processes [87], rather than for
advancing a brand new one. The issue of scale is, in fact, critical in
crowdsourcing performances. Spatial proximity of the crowd allows
easier communication via both traditional and online media in the city
space, and is more likely to reach a larger crowd and to include different
groups of population. Citizens are more inclined to engage in issues they
experience in everyday life and that affect their own city space and
community, rather than in issues they have no experience of [88]. City
councils, in particular, have generally some degree of autonomy in
taking internal planning and policy decisions, and this likely explains
why it is easier to gather people’s interest around issues they believe the
local administration, or the community have the potentiality to handle.
Differences between research-supported macro-regional EC’s
perspective and local-based initiatives raise also new questions about
the weaknesses and threats of digital social participation processes. In
the imaginary of a “hyperconnected city” popularised by EC, crowd­
sourcing is associated with technology-oriented initiatives currently
mushrooming in Europe (and beyond) that, despite support from sig­
nificant investments in data-driven solutions, and technological and
infrastructural development, it leaves most of the problem’s citizens feel
as the most pressing in their daily life unresolved (and even unad­
dressed) [89]. The race for innovative technology development and
implementation processes [90–92] is often led by private companies
that, thanks to their economic prominence, become the deciding actors
in public-private partnerships. As a consequence, the imaginary of a
“hyperconnected city” relying on scalable and replicable
Technology in Society 61 (2020) 101229
Vision and motivation for crowdsourcing Approach to criticalities
Powerful means to address governance challenges; High risk of private control on data-
creating of a common (virtual) space of dialogue; driven solutions, technological
increasing the effectiveness and efficacy of public infrastructures and data
government agency
Tool for complementing and expanding face-to- Mitigating measures for keeping control
face participation; on public decision-making processes
increasing the effectiveness and efficacy of public
local government agency
Tool for complementing and expanding face-to- Efforts toward the creation for
face participation; autonomous virtual public space
empowering lobbying;
increasing the effectiveness and efficacy of civil
society agency
technology-driven processes disregards that the technological side of
digital social participation and crowdsourcing processes, while impor­
tant, is not an endpoint in itself [93,94]. Local experiences make evident
how the bright imaginary of the “hyperconnected city”, while charac­
terised by appealing catchwords (democracy, participation, engage­
ment, etc), in its material performance, can lead to the
instrumentalization of citizens’ participation and co-optation of their
contributions. In consideration of the emerging criticalities toward the
privatisation of the virtual public sphere, the “receptive city” imaginary
proposed by some participation-oriented cities tackle the issues of po­
litical control [95], inclusiveness and accessibility, as they are con­
fronted with critical reactions, resistance, resilience and spontaneous
social innovation in the city. To this end, they supported the develop­
ment of federated web platform (e.g. in Ghent or Barcelona) and pub­
licly owned ICT companies to support local administration in the
transition toward digital democracy.
The creation for autonomous spaces on the web where the public can
exert control and deploy the connection potentiality is even more
stressed in the experiences supporting the “do-it-yourself city” imagi­
nary. More “active” experiences of spontaneous crowdsourcing pro­
cesses generated by different social needs (e.g. open and distributed
forms of knowledge gathering, innovation generation and decision-
making) [96–98], advanced by citizens’ associations, grassroot digital
collectives, hackers and social innovators, allow critical perspective of
engaged researchers to infiltrate the collective imaginary of crowd­
sourcing. The mutual constitution of the social and digital in crowd­
sourcing processes is addressed with particular attention to the issues of
trust and legitimacy [3], communication biases that prevent wide
engagement [99], exclusion and seclusion [100], data, information and
opinion control and censorship (including automatic censorship) [16],
monopolist appropriation and control of infrastructure and power im­
balances [101], opinion polarisation and manipulation of the crowd [44,
45].
7. Lessons learned from the performance of socio-technical
imaginaries
We started our paper with reference to the part of the scientific
community’s and the EC’s imaginary for crowdsourcing in the context of
social innovation. This suggests that crowdsourcing can support open
government and governance based on demand-driven and participation
principles and supported pivotal experimentation of public crowd­
sourcing with particular reference to the urban sustainability gover­
nance sphere. Our quali-quantitative analysis of academic production
and case repositories provided information on the number and the topics
in scientific research, the privileged area of intervention for crowd­
sourcing projects and the issues these most often tackle. While the
imaginary of a digitally empowered model for urban open governance is
9
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a et al. Technology in Society 61 (2020) 101229

supported by the rhetoric of democratisation and participation [102],
what is likely to motivate the “crowd” – from charities to businesses – to
embrace this imaginary is the individual or collective possibility to in­
crease their intentional, organisational capability and social capital, and
to enlarge their scale of intervention [103,104].
We complemented this with a categorisation and exploration of
exemplary local-based initiatives in public crowdsourcing. When
considering experiences in the urban field and the controversial and
critical reception, appropriation and re-elaboration of the crowdsourc­
ing narrative and the relationship between technology and society these
build upon, we detected two different imaginaries associated with the
performances of everyday digital social innovation: the imaginary of
“receptive city”, generally proposed by city administrations; and the
“do-it-yourself city” approach.
As a matter of fact, deeper forms of commitment in public gover­
nance (labelled “engagement” in Fig. 6), deploying the speed and
virtually infinitive connecting potentiality of the web, are slower to
become common practice. However, it represents the most promising
terrain for building a new critical imaginary of crowdsourcing and
performing digital social participation as grassroot and radical change­
makers. These radically contest the “technological fetishism” [58,59] of
the hyperconnected society and the imaginary of a city that can be
monitored and controlled from a distance [61,80] as an imaginary
projection of the new social order imposed on the city through the
popularisation of technological-mediated participation.
The “do-it-yourself city” imaginary of public crowdsourcing
emerging from local projects signals the need for dismantling the great
expectations of digital social participation, and tacitly suggests the way
for a more context-based appreciation of the barriers preventing the
promises of crowdsourcing (democratisation, wider accessibility to data,
information, opportunities, connections, etc.) and subsequent (some­
how automatic) empowerment, increased efficiency and effectiveness of
governing systems to turn into reality. Thus, this highlights that what is
often seen as a residual problem, despite being acknowledged (see
Ref. [27], in the enthusiastic imaginary of digital participation, is the
effect of a technological gap in determining who participates and how
s/he is involved [105]. A limited number of participants might end up
representing the whole community [106], and powerful interests at
intra-community level [107] generate powerful asymmetries [108],
impacting on the process outcomes. The paradoxical result is that, based
on its potentiality of enabling open governance processes, crowdsourc­
ing might end up having a disempowering effect and create new en­
claves, and new power geometries with access and inclusion imbalances.
As Davies and Simons [5] claim, participation does not take place just
because the road to participation is provided; equally, crowdsourcing
does not (hyper)connect people just because it is potentially able to do
so. The materialisation of socio-technical imaginaries is a fundamental
test bed for our vision to turn into reality, and feedback is fundamental
in correcting our perspective.

Annexes

Annex 1
List of EU-founded projects under FP7 and FP8 dealing with crowdsourcing and “Sustainability

NAME DESCRIPTION

Asset Boosts sustainable consumerism via personalized product information.

Capsella A data-driven project on agro-biodiversity and agri-food.
Captor Combines citizen science and collaborative learning to understand reasons and consequences of air pollution.
Crowd4Roads A project on crowd sensing and trip sharing for road sustainability.
DecarboNet A Decarbonisation Platform for Citizen Empowerment and Translating Collective Awareness into Behavioural Change.
HackAIR An open platform for air pollution monitoring.
Make-IT A platform for Maker communities, the Maker movement - design globally, manufacture locally, connects citizens and professionals with digital manufacturing and
communication technologies.
p2pvalue Impact Assessment Techno-social platform for sustainable models and value generation in commons-based peer production in the Future Internet for social
innovation.
POWER A socio-technical approach to mobilise local water action.
Saving Food 2.0 Tackles food waste through collaboration and online networks.
Socratic is a Social Creative Intelligence Platform for achieving Global Sustainability Goals.
EXPOSOMICS The exposome concept has been proposed to improve the identification of environmental risk factors for disease, by applying to epidemiological research, new tools
emerging from exposure sciences and high-throughput omic technologies.
HERCULES The HERCULES project strived for the empowerment of public and private actors to protect, manage and plan for sustainable cultural landscapes at local, national
and Pan-European scales.
EU-InnovatE The overall aim of EU-InnovatE was to investigate the active roles of users in shaping sustainable lifestyles and the transition to a Green economy in Europe.
North State In project North State of the EU Framework Program 7, novel approaches were developed for the prediction of carbon balance of the boreal forest ecosystems.
WILDTHING WILDTHING is a citizen collaboration-based multiplatform application for the control of Invasive Alien Species: flora, fauna, micro organisms, fungi and also in the
marine environment.
ECODISTR-ICT The ECODISTR-ICT project has developed an Integrated Decision Support System (IDSS) that facilitates decision making on the retrofitting and renewal of existing
districts and their composing buildings.
BEYOND BEYOND project aims at creating a framework that accounts for socio-technical views on sustainability, allowing innovators to better meet societal needs within
their development processes.
BISO The project aims at starting a Bioeconomy Information System Observatory (BISO).
CORDIS Climate change is expected to significantly affect water quality, water availability and flooding
COBWEB COBWEB leverage the UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR). Concentrating initially on the Welsh Dyfi Biosphere Reserve, we are developing a
citizens observatory framework, which will be validated within the context of National …
REAKT REAKT (Strategies and tools for Real time Earthquake Risk Reduction) is a CP-IP project funded by the European Commission in the context of Framework Program
7 under the Theme Environment (including climate change).
ConGRESS ConGRESS is a Framework 7 Coordination and Support Action project focusing on strategies for better conserving the genetic component of biodiversity.
GEO- The objective of GEO-PICTURES was to provide a powerful humanitarian and environmental emergency management platform for global use, represented by
PICTURES concrete needs from the UN, European Union (EU) civil protection mechanism and Government of Amazonas, as largest environmental areas of concern in the
world.

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Annex 2
Websites of the projects mentioned in the text.

Name of the initiative Short description Link

Better Reykjavik Better Reykjavík is an online consultation forum where citizens are given the chance to present http://reykjavik.is/en/better-reykjavik-0
their ideas on issues regarding services and operations of the City of Reykjavík.
BurgerBudget BurgerBudget call in Gent for citizens-driven projects uploaded in a public portal where all the https://ookmijn.stad.gent/burgerbudget/voo
citizens are allowed to upload their own proposals and vote for the preferred one to get funds rstellen
Cancer Commons cancer commons helps patients, physicians, and providers identify and access personalized https://www.cancercommons.org/
treatments that are beyond the standard of care.
Citizen Cyberlab Citizen Cyberlab develops new forms of public participation in research. The lab initiates projects http://www.citizencyberlab.org/
and organises events that encourage citizens and scientists to collaborate in new ways to solve big
challenges.
CitizenLab CitizenLab is a citizen engagement platform for local governments. Reach more citizens, manage https://www.citizenlab.co/
their ideas efficiently, and make decisions based on real-time data.
Citizens’ Initiative Act The citizens’ initiative gives citizens new possibilities to influence public policy. It enhances http://vrk.fi/en/citizens-initiative
direct democracy and supports civic activity, thus strengthening a civil society, where different
population groups participate in and influence the development of society.
Citying platform This crowdsourcing urban simulation platform proposes a framework that employs widespread http://www.citying.ethz.ch/
smart phones to compute urban sustainability values.
Citizen Sensing and The project investigate, through three case studies, the relationship between technologies and http://www.jennifergabrys.net/2013/01/citi
Environmental Practice practices of environmental sensing and citizen engagement. zen-sensing-environmental-practice/
Commons Commons are shared resources (or platforms) that are created and cared by a user community, https://www.commons.gent/
according to its own agreements, rules and standards.
Community Foundation of Project to leverage Internet technology and source creative ideas for a city development project https://www.cfbham.org/tag/prize2thefut
Greater Birmingham ure/
Crowdfunding.gent Crowdfunding.gent is the crowdfunding platform for people from Ghent who have the desire to https://crowdfunding.gent/nl/
create and experience the city together.
Edgeryders Edgeryders is a social enterprise, and an open and distributed think tank of people working https://edgeryders.eu
through an online social network and a series of conferences.
EveryAware The project intends to integrate all crucial phases (environmental monitoring, awareness http://www.everyaware.eu/
enhancement, behavioural change) in the management of the environment in a unified
framework, by creating a new technological platform combining sensing technologies,
networking applications and data-processing tools
European Citizens The project aims to raise awareness of the possibilities and to develop the skills at national and http://www.inepa.si/eucrowd/
Crowdsourcing European level for using innovative channels of e-participation of citizens in politics and policy
with a focus on the application of crowdsourcing in fostering a democratic debate on the future of
the European Union
European Observatory on The represents the convergence of motivations for both traditional Science Cafes and supporting http://scicafe2.reading.ac.uk/
Crowdsourcing participative exchange and co-generation of knowledge rather than simply one way information
transfer.
FixMyStreet With FixMyStreet Platform you can easily launch a website that helps people to report street http://fixmystreet.org/
problems like potholes and broken street lights. Problem reports are then sent to authorities for
fixing.
FreeCycle It’s a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for https://www.freecycle.org/
free in their own towns and neighborhoods. It’s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of
landfills.
I paid a bribe Initiative to tackle corruption by harnessing the collective energy of citizens. IPaidABribe.com is a http://www.ipaidabribe.com/#gsc.tab¼0
citizen driven mechanism for tracking bribe payment activity.
IBM Centre for the Study of The aim of the IBM Centre is to tap into the best minds in academe and the nonprofit sector who http://www.businessofgovernment.org/
Government can use rigorous public management research and analysis to produce reports with practical
advice and insight for public sector executives and managers to improve the effectiveness of
government.
Imaginons Paris Demain It is a project where citizens have the opportunity to express their opinions on already existing http://www.imaginons.paris
(and sometimes contested) urban development projects.
Madame la Maire J’ai une Id�ee Madame la Maire J’ai une Id� ee platform has been provided by the city council to harvest ideas for https://idee.paris.fr/
a participatory budget, allocating 100 million euros to winning projects.
Otwarta Warszawa The platform Otwarta Warszawa managed by the social company Million You in Warsaw, collects http://www.otwartawarszawa.pl/
people’s ideas on urban development, in collaboration with the Warsaw city administration (who
can take the final decision about the implementation of emerging proposals).
OpenIdeo OpenIDEO is part of IDEO, a design and innovation firm that uses a human-centered, https://openideo.com/
collaborative approach to solving complex issues – a methodology we call design thinking.
Modeled on this approach, OpenIDEO enables people everywhere to collaborate in developing
innovative solutions to pressing social and environmental challenges.
OurMK OurMK projects call for citizen problem-solving based on ICT devices and processes, by offering https://ourmk.org/
funds or mentoring as a reward for the realisation of the proposed project itself
Peerby Peerby is a small company with the aim of bringing people into contact and allowing them to https://www.peerby.com/dashboard
share, offering an alternative to the disposable culture.
PublicLab toolkit Public Lab is a community where everyone can learn how to investigate environmental concerns. https://publiclab.org
Using inexpensive DIY techniques, the project seeks to change how people see the world in
environmental, social, and political terms.
ReUse Network Reuse Network supports more than 150 reuse charities across the UK to help them alleviate https://reuse-network.org.uk
poverty, reduce waste and tackle climate change.
Specehive Spacehive is a United Kingdom-based crowdfunding platform for projects aimed at improving https://www.spacehive.com/
local civic and community spaces.
Stjornlagarad 2011 The platform provides for an increased public participation in decision-making, also leading to http://stjornlagarad.is/english/
further distribution of power.
The Finnish Experiment http://thefinnishexperiment.com/
(continued on next page)

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Annex 2 (continued )
Name of the initiative Short description Link

The research primarily focused on the application of crowdsourcing in government with reference
to its actual or potential impact on traditional policy-making (e.g. political and economic
decision, law reform, participatory budgeting, petition sites).
Ushahidi Ushahidi is a platform to quickly check in with each other in critical situations, built to help other https://www.ushahidi.com/
teams reach each other everyday and in a crisis.
Wheelmap Wheelmap is an online map to search, find and mark wheelchair-accessible places. https://wheelmap.org/

Annex 3 - Documents on (digital) social innovation

� EU Research & Innovation for and with Cities, Yearly Mapping Report. Available at: https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/p
ublication/9fb7a8ce-aefa-11e7-837e-01aa75ed71a1
� Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation: An Introduction. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-ma
rket/en/collective-awareness
� Communication from the commission to the European parliament, the council, the European economic and social committee and the committee of
the regions: EU eGovernment Action Plan 2016–2020 Accelerating the digital transformation of government. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/
digital-single-market/en/news/communication-eu-egovernment-action-plan-2016-2020-accelerating-digital-transformation
� Communication from the commission to the European parliament, the council, the European economic and social committee and the committee of
the regions: The European eGovernment Action Plan 2011–2015 Harnessing ICT to promote smart, sustainable & innovative Government.
Available at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri¼COM:2010:0743:FIN
� Digital agenda for Europe. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/digital-agenda-europe-key-publications
� What next for digital social innovation? Realising the potential of people and technology to tackle social challenges. Available at: https://ec.europa
.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/dsi4eu-shaping-future-digital-social-innovation-europe
� Communication to the Commission: Communicating about Europe via the Internet Engaging the citizens. Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/do
cs/internet-strategy_en.pdf
� European eParticipation Summary Report. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/european-eparticipation-summary-
report
� Europe’s Future: Open Innovation, Open Science Open to the World. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/open-inno
vation-open-science-open-world-vision-europe
� Empowering people, driving change. Social Innovation in the European Union. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/migrant-integration/librarydo
c/empowering-people-driving-change-social-innovation-in-the-european-union
� Digital Single Market. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/priorities/digital-single-market/

Documents on urban future

� Cities of tomorrow Challenges, visions, ways forward. Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/it/information/publications/report

s/2011/cities-of-tomorrow-challenges-visions-ways-forward
� Market Place of the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities, Roadmap 2017. Available at: http://eu-smartcities.eu/s
ites/default/files/2017-08/EIP%20SCC%20Market%20Place%20-%20Roadmap%202017%20Public%20Version.pdf
� European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities Operational Implementation Plan: First Public Draft. Available at: http://ec.
europa.eu/eip/smartcities/
� Urban Agenda. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/urban-agenda
� Green Digital Charter. Available at: http://www.greendigitalcharter.eu/
� Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC): http://ec.europa.eu/eip/smartcities/

Documents on Europe2020 priorities

� Horizon 2020, Work Programme 2018–2020, Topics related to Cities and Urban Development. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/
urban-agenda-eu/horizon-2020-work-programme-2018-2020
� Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the council, the European central bank, the European economic and social
committee, the committee of the regions and the European investment bank: An Investment Plan for Europe. Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/fi
nance/docs/law/171011-communication-banking-union_en.pdf
� EU 20/20/20 energy and climate targets. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/strategies/2020_en
� European Commission’s Investment Plan for Europe - Juncker Plan. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/priorities/jobs-growth-and-invest
ment/investment-plan-europe-juncker-plan_en

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