Congratulations to Dr. Natasha Tusikov (Criminology Program, Department of Social Science) on her award of a grant from SSHRC in support of her project “Governing Knowledge and Data in Smart Cities.”
Dr. Tusikov, as the principal investigator, will work with collaborators Dr. Blayne Haggart and Dr. Nicole Goodman, both from the political science department at Brock University, and Dr. Zachary Spicer from the political science department at the University of Western Ontario. The $65,834 grant is part of the June 2018 round of SSHRC Insight Development Grants.
Smart cities exist at the intersection of “old economies” based on production and physical infrastructure, and “new economies” based on the control of knowledge. The increasing dominance of the global economy by knowledge- and Internet-based industries represent one of the most dramatic trends of the past thirty years. Smart cities raise critical issues for policymakers, particularly regarding the division of authority between governments and the private-sector providers of smart-city services, surveillance and privacy, and the overall regulatory framework within which smart cities operate.
This project proposes to investigate the central role that the control of data plays in smart cities, particularly the interactions between state and non-state actors in regulating the creation and use of information within the knowledge-based economy. For its case study, the project will examine the smart city plan designed for Toronto’s Quayside neighbourhood and proposed by Sidewalk Labs, a subsidy of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. Empirically, the project aims to fill substantial gaps in our understanding of data ownership and smart-city governance, particularly in Canada. Questions of data governance are particularly critical in Canada because all levels of government lack data governance strategies. This project’s findings will contribute toward the necessary work of crafting a data governance strategy for Canada.
SSHRC, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, is a federal research funding agency of the Government of Canada.