Smart Cities: Sub-National Authorities at the Crossroads of Digital Globalisation, Autonomy and the Local Implementation of Human Rights

"The UN-HABITAT reported in 2007 that, for the first time in human history, the urban population became equal to the rural population and a “human being either would be born in a city or move to a one” by 2007. The Quito Declaration of Cities and Human Settlements for All (HABITAT III) followingly announced the new global agenda based on the “science of cities”. As affirmed in the text, bonne urbanisation is announced to be the key to sustainable and resilient cities as a target of the 2030 Agenda. The smart city, which in literature is defined as the information city, the digital city, the knowledge city, or the ubiquitous city, emerged as a concept in literature in the 1990s and its most general formulation; it means the restructuring of a city at the administrative, economic, social and legal levels through the use of technology. In line with various classifications, the smart cities of the 21st century can be technology-driven, tech-enabled or citizen-co-created. As the global tendencies towards massive digitalisation dominate the everyday life of communities, states, and international actors, the cities as local authorities are not immune to this pressure and are evolving to be defined as partial or complete Datapolis as the territorial locus of Urbanocene. They collect and process massive amounts of data through sensors, traffic systems or internet technologies, facilitating access to online local public services and elected local representatives. Thus, the smart city concept summons scholars to evaluate a novel urban digital social contract that is evolving around various political, sociological, economic and legal challenges. In this context, cities are being constructed as a system of interconnected machines in conjunction with their inhabitants, territorial space and public commons. Consequently, urban dwellers are being redefined as data providers and, ultimately, data itself. However, this transformation does not make cities immune from human rights obligations arising from constitutional and international normative frameworks. In my presentation, I will evaluate human-rights-based data policies in cities in the context of the European Charter of Local Self-Government and the data protection standards in the European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence. The Charter, as the sole international binding agreement on protecting the autonomy of local self-government units and the local populations within, denotes the right and the ability “to regulate and manage” a substantial part of public affairs in the interests of the local population (Art.3). The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities affirmed among its priorities for 2023-2026 that local authorities will support ethical, legal, reliable technologies in the services of democracy by taking into account digital vulnerabilities of local communities. By focusing on the current legal framework, I will attempt to reconcile the digital reading of city autonomy with obligations for human rights implementation at the local level, with the objective of re-constructing a right-to-city perspective in the process of the smartization of local public spaces." (476 Words)