Data and platform co-ops in smart city citizenship: interview with Igor Calzada

Igor Calzada is a senior researcher at universities like Oxford and Cardiff with a focus on urban, regional and technopolitical transformations, considering data issues and social innovation. In November 2020, he launched the book Smart City Citizenship, which proposes another framework at smart cities based on democratic governance and citizenship. Thus, he presents how it is possible to understand and intervene in technopolitical disputes involving algorithms, data, and artificial intelligence based on notions such as digital sovereignty. Among the possibilities, there is the creation of data and platform co-ops based on data and digital commons. For the author, data cooperatives are a subtype of platform cooperatives, in which they focus on business models, while data co-ops share and store data. The book analyzes, among other cases, the Barcelona ecosystem and proposes perspectives for public policies. Currently, Calzada is interested in exploring new models of data governance and artificial intelligence to propose alternative ways to data ecosystems in the European scenario. He defends experimental cities as a reaction to the mainstream idea of ​​the city as a platform, as a reproduction of extractive and panoptic practices through hyperconnectivity. But it will be very difficult in a dangerous context. And he provokes: “how, in the current context, in which we are closed in our homes, can we propose cities with open systems? Other recommendations from the author are an article on platform and data co-ops published in Sustainability journal and a conversation in Spanish about social innovation in smart cities. Read the interview with Igor Calzada: https://digilabour.com.br/2021/01/06/data-and-platform-co-ops-in-smart-city-citizenship-interview-with-igor-calzada