'Smart cities' urged to look beyond rich white men and target those in need

BARCELONA, SPAIN – A growing push to put cities on a digital path to a greener future risks excluding groups like the poorest, disabled and elderly, and will fail to benefit those people unless technology is used to help meet their needs, rights advocates have warned. They also called for women to be given a bigger say in urban planning that is based on high-tech tools such as big data and artificial intelligence, while speaking at an international conference on "smart cities" in Barcelona this week. "My fear is that smart cities end up benefiting the elite white men," said Catherine D'Ignazio, an assistant professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the United States, she said, national politics and other social spheres are shaped by "the privilege hazard," in which a small, dominant group -- often of rich, older men -- make decisions for others whose lives and experiences they know little about. One way to counteract that is to produce and use data that dive into key areas of discrimination, such as gender and race, she added. Berkeley-based consultancy World Enabled, which works for the inclusion of people with disabilities, collaborated with the University of California to analyze nearly 1,200 projects with digital elements run by six international development agencies.