Smart Cities: Striking a Balance Between Urban Resilience and Civil Liberties

Abstract: Cities are becoming smarter and more resilient by integrating urban infrastructure with information technology. However, concerns grow that smart cities might reverse progress on civil liberties when sensing, profiling, and predicting citizen activities; undermining citizen autonomy in connectivity, mobility, and energy consumption; and deprivatizing digital infrastructure. In response, cities need to deploy technical breakthroughs, such as privacy-enhancing technologies, cohort modelling, and fair and explainable machine learning. However, as throwing technologies at cities cannot always address civil liberty concerns, cities must ensure transparency and foster citizen participation to win public trust about the way resilience and liberties are balanced.