Smart Charlotte Engagement
This summer and fall, the city is piloting Digital Trust for Places and Routines, a standardized method of improving transparency around public-facing technologies and creating opportunities for feedback. This work is complemented by the learnings from a focus group workshop series. This workshop was created in partnership with the Center for Digital Equity and explored smart city technologies and how to improve engagement around them.
The goal is to improve communication, build accountability and trust, and create a pathway for broader partnerships for resident-centered technology and data solutions. In the process, the city seeks to build new relationships with residents and increase capacity for their participation in Innovation Labs. Residents would be joining participants from the city, other government entities, private sector companies, nonprofits, and academia to shape transformative solutions leveraging data and technology.
People are what make a city smart. The Five Tactics for the Co-Created Smart City offers guidance for bringing out the best of collaborative engagement to shape public-facing technology investments.
This document was created as a guide to be used by anyone looking to develop solutions with the community at the forefront. It was commissioned by the Knight Foundation and builds from lessons learned in 2016-18 around the North End Smart District. This document focuses on actions that feed up into tactics to accomplish goals that establish a co-created smart city.
The document contains worksheets and case studies for points of reference to support the application of the five tactics. Use cases for these tactics include: 1) Exploring a new public-facing technology, 2) Building or scaling up a community-led pilot project for data or digital tools, 3) Broadening adoption, support or sustainability of a tech investment, 4) Creating a model of practice for an institution that brokers opportunities for for public-facing technology, 5) Working to build trust and accountability with the community while developing innovative solutions to the community's challenges, or 6) Working to strengthen the community.