Data-Smart City Solutions

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    AI and the Transformation of Accountability and Discretion in Urban Governance
    (Data-Smart City Solutions, 2024-10) Goldsmith, Stephen; Yang, Juncheng "Tony"
    The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in urban governance presents significant opportunities to transform decision-making and enhance accountability. With advancements in Generative AI (GenAI), AI technology has become more accessible, promoting data-driven governance approaches across various tasks. The paper highlights AI’s potential to reposition human discretion and reshape specific types of accountability, elevating the decision-making capabilities of both frontline bureaucrats and managers while ensuring ethical standards and public trust are maintained. The concept of "accountable discretion" is introduced to describe how AI can augment discretion without sacrificing accountability. Additionally, the paper discusses the critical role of city-level governments in implementing AI technologies and managing public perceptions. The discussion advocates for a human-AI partnership that enhances public service delivery and fosters accountable governance through legitimate institutional measures.
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    The Responsive City Cycle
    (Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University, 2022-10-26) Goldsmith, Stephen; Gardner, Elizabeth
    Trust can take a long time to build and short time to lose. In the past two decades trust in government has declined precipitously, including a drop in trust in local government which traditionally scored highly on trust metrics with residents. This paper presents a form of trust-building based on responsiveness with a focus on harnessing digital tools and 21st century methods for engaging with and learning from residents. Additionally, cities are at an inflection point due to the influx of billions of dollars in federal funding through the American Rescue Plan Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. This presents an opportunity for cities to meaningfully engage residents around spending, repair, and construction decisions and gain back trust through the “loop of responsiveness” we introduce in this paper. Digital engagement tools form the backbone of this new loop. Current technology can be split into both active and passive methods, sorted by level of stakeholder work required. Passive sensors are low-effort and include sensors for monitoring air and water quality or catching early cracks in bridges too small for the eye to see. Active sensors require greater effort from stakeholders, including attending community meetings (virtually or in-person), writing to local officials, or submitting a request to 311. These methods can be mixed and matched together to cover a broad scope of engagement.
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    Implementing Digital Infrastructure Responses to Equity, Sustainability, and Safety
    (Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University, 2022-11-30) Goldsmith, Stephen; Gardner, Elizabeth
    Local leaders across the United States have a unique opportunity to address crumbling infrastructure and increasing inequities thanks to trillions of dollars of new federal funding. The American Rescue Plan Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act represent the largest infrastructure appropriations in decades. Yet while the scale of this new government funding is historic, it must be used wisely to provide returns on investment for decades to come. The authors advocate for investment in digital infrastructure that incorporates hardware(like Internet of Things (IoT) devices), data software, platforms for analysis and collaboration, advanced data capabilities (to both manage and protect data), and a smart governance structure to oversee these tools through policy and regulation. Digital infrastructure assists in managing public assets, scheduling maintenance and monitoring safety, improving sustainability and accessibility, and prioritizing equity in investment, health, and quality of life. Digital infrastructure supports broadly beneficial, important goals. For example, improving roads in Black communities not only combats historic disinvestment but also increases safety by establishing safe bike lanes and pedestrian paths. This in turn causes positive impact on public health through increased physical activity, decreased automobile emissions, and fewer traffic fatalities. While governments can improve road conditions without digital infrastructure, the data collected from intelligent tools like air quality sensors and traffic cameras empowers local officials to measure progress more easily and detect – and implement – necessary changes. Digital tools can facilitate faster and more expansive public engagement,inviting the community to codesign new infrastructure and vote on improvements. Digital infrastructure necessitates nuanced digital and data governance. As the physical environment changes, so too must city policy. We recommend that local leaders take these approaches to maximize the impact and potential of digital infrastructure: increase administrative capacity to manage both connected infrastructure and resulting data; center privacy and data security; plan for transparency and share open data, particularly with groups that have previously been targets of oversurveillance; increase community engagement at all stages of infrastructure planning; prioritize equity in timelines, funding decisions, and quality of life improvements; and engage legal support around vendor technology, data protection, and data sharing. If cities can facilitate these changes in governance and create or retrofit digital, connected infrastructure, they will be well-positioned to use the new federal funding to address the harms of the past and build safer, healthier, and more equitable futures. This paper was produced with the support of the Knight Foundation. The authors are grateful for the foundation’s investment in our work to assist cities in using digital infrastructure in novel ways and strengthen their communities.
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    A Framework for Reducing Place-Based Inequity
    (Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University, 2023-07) Goldsmith, Stephen; Louisy, Khahlil
    In the spring of 2023, the Data-Smart City Solutions team at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) hosted 30 large-city chiefs of staff at the school, and asked whether their cities’ chief equity officers would be interested in joining a community of practice. In just the first week, more than half of the chiefs of staff answered affirmatively, enthusiastic about the chance to share the community of practice value with their colleagues. Their overwhelming positive response illustrates how much has changed. Five years ago, the position of chief equity officer barely existed. Yet, at the same time, not enough has changed. As cities wrestle with the implications of race and equity and as chief equity officers move to establish themselves inside city and governmental structures, the focus must now turn to the hard work of effecting meaningful change. Residents and city officials often mean different things when discussing equity. Some individuals equate ‘equity’ with public action. For some, equity relates to fairness in opportunities. The language of White House Executive Order 13985 touches on both: “Equity means consistent and systematic opportunities, and impartial treatment of all individuals, including individuals who belong to underserved communities that have been denied such treatment.”i For still others, equity relates to outcomes, or it may define the more fundamental question of how we can produce a more just society. In this framework, we think of equity as multi-dimensional, the product of all the forementioned meanings. Defined as such, in our dealings with public officials we have witnessed an almost desperate search to find ways to combat the inequities that thwart opportunity, despite the evidence to suggest that effective strategies already exist. Indeed, based on our research and our work with local leaders, we believe that applying a geographic or place-based lens to issues related to equity offers significant potential. In this paper, we focus on geography as a key mechanism for turning concern into action. We frame the approach around geography for several reasons. First and foremost, in the United States, race and place are inextricably linked. Our cities’ neighborhoods are divided by economic status which all too often aligns with race. As summarized in a 2020 National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper, “Racially restrictive covenants in deeds, steering by real estate agents, slum clearance and the construction of large public housing projects, the routing of interstate highways, discrimination in mortgage lending, the location of segregated schools, unequal labor market opportunities, threats of outright violence directed at Black families, and lack of protection of property and civil rights have all profoundly affected where African Americans lived and the degree to which they could accumulate housing wealth.” ii NBER researchers studied the Home Owners Loan Corporation and Federal Housing Agency maps, stretching back to the 1930’s and concluded that Black people “were forced to live in the lowest quality neighborhoods before the maps were [even] created.” iii Since policies like zoning codes and unequal delivery of services continue to dominate local and state actions, interventions aimed at closing wealth, health, and education gaps must have a strong geographic component. Second, as advocated in Collaborative Cities-Mapping Solutions to Wicked Problems,iv place – and by extension maps that layer data from multiple sources onto geographic areas – provide a platform for understanding. The compounding effect of discriminatory policies on places and the people that live in them produces the greatest harm. Layered spatial data can bring to light the aggregate and discrete impact of factors as varied as environmental conditions, safety, green space, access to health care, healthy food, and transportation. Data visualization allows users to process substantially more information than charts and tables alone and, as such, helps guide action in an immediate way. The final reason we propose using a spatial lens to mitigate decades of discriminatory policies is structural. Most local governmental activities, although organized by agency, are delivered in a place. Spatial visualization helps facilitate cooperation across agencies and organizations, which complex problems demand and which have historically proven difficult to affect. By looking at equity through a place-based lens, local officials better understand the implications of connected actions and they have a basis for engaging the community. As presented in the online resource for Collaborative Cities, “given the way that discrimination is rooted in America’s landscape, policies and interventions aimed at closing wealth, health, and education gaps have a strong geographic component.” v In this paper, we present seven pillars of a framework that can guide fairness in operations and equity in policymaking.