A New Legal Infrastructure for Smart Cities

Context
The term 'smart city' refers to the integration of technology within urban spaces to collect data to address economic, social, and environmental challenges (Vito Albino et al., 2015). US smart city initiatives have presented legal problems including: infringement of privacy rights (U.S. v. Jones (2012)), stifling the voice of residents (Frug and Barron, 2008), and limiting citizen participation in decisionmaking (Lefebvre, 1968). Cities innovative responses include: Boston's "Smart Street" program to collect data through an agreement with Verizon; Phoenix's 'smart region' ("the Connective"), connecting 22 cities and towns; and Pittsburgh's Open Data Legislation (2014), with a process for identifying and approving datasets for publication. Using these cities as examples due to their unique responses, this project will investigate the extent that smart cities development is limited by the legal infrastructures
within which they operate. It will be the first systematic legal analysis in a smart city context, with findings relevant to initiatives across the US, and comparable efforts in the UK.

Research Questions
- In the context of smart cities, what legal hurdles have the 'smart city' initiatives of Phoenix, Boston, and Pittsburgh faced?
- What legal strategies have these cities adopted to respond to these challenges?
- How can this analysis inform future smart city initiatives in the US and beyond?

Methodology
This is a piece of doctrinal research that positions itself politically by reference to Lefebvre's work on the right to the city (above) and jurisprudentially, by reference to A) the mosaic theory of privacy (SCOTUS) which posits that privacy harms may arise when multiple pieces of public information, which by themselves are not invasive, combine to reveal private information (Woo, 2021) and B) generally by reference to the constraints of comparative legal research (Hirschl, 2014).

Method(s):
- Collection of data using Westlaw...