2016 12th International Conference
Conference on
on Signal-Image
Signal-Image Technology
Technology&&Internet-Based
Emergent Ambient Culture in Smart Cities
Exploring the Internet of Cultural Things (IoCT) and Applications in 21st Century Urban Spaces
H. Patricia McKenna
AmbientEase
UrbanitiesLab
Victoria, Canada
e-mail: mckennaph@gmail.com
Abstract—This work explores the Internet of Cultural
Things (IoCT) and applications in the context of smart cities
and learning cities. Ambient culture is advanced as an
emergent form of the IoCT and applications in the context of
21st century everyday interactions in urban spaces. The
constructs of awareness, learning, openness, and engagement
enable formulation and operationalization of a framework
for ambient culture in support of this study of the Internet of
Cultural Things (IoCT) and applications in smart cities. A
case study approach is used in the gathering of qualitative
and quantitative data through interviews and surveys
conducted with diverse individuals across several cities in
Canada and Europe. In parallel with this study, anecdotal
evidence is gathered from individuals and groups about
smart cities, enabling further analysis and triangulation of
data. This work contributes to the research literature across
several domains including the IoCT and applications in
relation to smart cities and learning cities. Future research
and practice directions are identified for ambient culture
with implications for ambient heritage, libraries, data
relationships, and data infrastructures going forward.
Keywords-ambient culture; ambient heritage; creativity;
cultural heritage; internet of cultural things; data;
infrastructure; learning cities; libraries; museums; smart cities
I. INTRODUCTION
In the context of 21st century cities, creativity is said to
be “a key driver of smartness” by Gil-Garcia, Zhang, and
Puron-Cid [1], citing Švob-Đokić [2]. As part of the
creativity component of smart cities, Gil-Garcia, Zhang,
and Puron-Cid [1] identify the significant investment by
cities “in their cultural infrastructure and creative
economies” over the last 20 years. Referring to the work of
Florida [3], Gil-Garcia, Zhang, and Puron-Cid point to the
use of culture “as a means of urban regeneration and
economic development” and also of “social inclusion”
citing Comunian [4]. Chianese and Piccialli [5] describe
the Internet of Cultural Things (IoCT) as the intersection
of cultural heritage and the Internet of Things (IoT) using
the example of a smart museum. Denis [6] describes a joint
IoCT project focusing on the British Library “to shed light
on the prominent role of cultural institutions in fostering
access to knowledge” in an age of “the digitization of
culture.” Denis [6] describes the project in terms of how
the library “will have transformed itself in response to the
profound changes in technology, research and information
services.”
978-1-5090-5698-9/16 $31.00 © 2016 IEEE 420
DOI 10.1109/SITIS.2016.72
Internet-BasedSystems
Systems
II. BACKGROUND
This work is motivated by the need for understanding
the implications of pervasive and aware technologies in
relation to people and culture in 21 st century urban spaces.
The aim of this paper is to explore ambient culture as
integral to, and a manifestation of, the Internet of Cultural
Things (IoCT). As such, this work explores emergent
forms of the IoCT and applications in the city, whether
connected or not to cultural institutions.
This work is significant in two key ways in that first, it
employs the conceptual lens of ambient culture, as an
extension of and complement to, existing notions of
culture; and second, it explores the IoCT and applications
in relation to technology, people, and public spaces in
contemporary urban environments. The research design for
this work is based on a case study approach using
interviews to gather qualitative data and surveys to gather
quantitative data from a range of individuals across several
cities. Content analysis is used to analyze qualitative data,
employing inductive and deductive approaches, to study
data and the terms emerging from a review of the research
literature, respectively. In parallel with this study,
anecdotal evidence was gathered from individuals and
groups across the city, enabling further analysis,
comparison, and triangulation of data. Additional details
about the methodology for this study are included in
section IV. A review of the literature was conducted
focusing on smart cities in relation to emerging
understandings of ambient culture and the Internet of
Cultural Things (IoCT) and applications.
This work enables investigation of the following four
research questions, using the four constructs of awareness,
learning, openness, and engagement to explore the IoCT
and applications as ambient culture in 21 st century smart
cities.
Q1: How does awareness manifest in contemporary urban
ambient culture environments?
Q2: How does ambient culture inform learning in
contemporary urban environments?
Q3: What constitutes openness in contemporary urban
ambient culture environments?
Q4: What form(s) does engagement take in contemporary
urban ambient culture environments?
For the purposes of this paper, key terms are defined in
sub-sections A to B.
A. Smart Cities
Gil-Garcia, Pardo, and Nam [7] urge that a smart city
“be seen as a continuum in which local government
officials, citizens, and other stakeholders” are encouraged
to “think about the initiatives that attempt to make the city
a better place to live.” While Gil-Garcia, Zhang, and
Puron-Cid [1] claim “there is no consensus about what
smartness means,” McKenna [8] suggests that, “smartness
pertains to the awareness of people, of technologies, and of
people interacting with technologies in urban spaces.”
B. Internet of Cultural Things (IoCT)
Chianese and Piccialli [5] describe the Internet of
Cultural Things (IoCT) using “IoT architecture that is able
to support the designing of a smart museum” that consists
of “a static cultural space that becomes intelligent” through
“the definition of an innovative model of sensors and
services.”
Alencar-Brayner and Wright [9] describe the IoCT in
terms of “creative explorations of data in cultural
institutions” such as libraries.
As “a counterpoint to the managerial drive for
efficiencies” that “dominates discourse around the ‘internet
of things’,” the @IoCT Project [10], looks to “develop
innovative approaches to new cultural data” through
“examining digital traces created by everyday interactions
that make up library life.”
What follows in this paper is a theoretical perspective
for the work, a description of the methodology,
presentation and discussion of findings, contributions,
challenges, and concluding comments.
III. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE
A review of the research literature for smart cities, the
Internet of Cultural Things (IoCT) and applications, and
ambient culture is presented in formulation of a theoretical
perspective for this work. An ambient culture framework
for the IoCT and applications in smart cities is then
operationalized for use in exploration of the propositions
for this study, in response to the research questions.
A. Smart Cities
Gil-Garcia, Zhang, and Puron-Cid [1] identify
creativity as one of fourteen key drivers of smartness in
government. Key components of the creativity dimension
of the smart city include “knowledge creation, knowledge
management, education, culture, arts, learning city, and
learning government” [1]. Openness is identified as a key
component in government smartness in terms of
transparency, participation, collaboration, and trust and as
a source of “diverse information” from “different actors in
society” in “smarter ways” [1]. Citizen engagement is
particularly critical to government smartness in that it “has
the potential to develop citizens’ sense of ownership of
their city, enhance the local authority’s awareness of their
needs, and ultimately reshape the citizen-government
relationship” [1]. According to Gil-Garcia, Zhang, and
Puron-Cid, citizen engagement “allows two-way
communication and enables collaboration and
participation” for “more intelligent relationships.” Gil-
Garcia, Zhang, and Puron-Cid note the “opportunity to
combine emergent information technologies” such as the
Internet of Things (IoT), “new analytical methods, and
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open data” in developing “innovative solutions to pressing
problems.”
It is worth noting that in providing an overview of
smart cities, Khatoun and Zeadally [11] present a smart
city model consisting of four main components – Internet
of Things, Internet of Services, Internet of Data, and the
Internet of People. Fan, Chen, Ziong, and Chen [12] note
that “data standing alone has little or no meaning” and that
“when they interoperate” it is “the information of the
relations between data” that “become more significant and
useful.” As such, Fan, Chen, Ziong, and Chen [12]
describe the Internet of Data (IoD) as “a network of data”
interconnecting “all the digital data entities together.”
Johnson [13] discusses libraries in the context of smart
cities, identifying the roles of smart libraries and
information services and the importance of smart
librarians.
Concurrent with the emergence of smart cities over the
last two decades [14] is the emergence of the placemaking
movement [15]. Placemaking “pays close attention to the
myriad ways in which the physical, social, ecological,
cultural, and even spiritual qualities of a place are
intimately intertwined” [15]. Where smartness is claimed
to be the “new urban agenda” [16], Kent claims that,
“placemaking is the new urban agenda” and calls for a
“convergence of movements/disciplines around place” in
order “to generate innovative solutions and achieve
multiple outcomes at once” [17]. In view of the complex
and wicked challenges facing 21 st century cities [18] and
evolving understandings of smart cities [19], both
placemaking and smart cities reinforce, enrich, and
complement each other, providing enormous opportunities
and potentials.
B. Internet of Cultural Things (IoCT) and Applications
The Internet of Cultural Things (IoCT) is described in a
recently funded IoCT project by the Arts and Humanities
Research Council (AHRC), Digital Transformations [10]
involving Kings College London, Winchester School of
Art and the British Library as an exploration of “cultural
institutions through creative practices” [10].
Wright explores the IoCT through libraries [20],
recounting that, on a recent visit to a library after a 10-year
absence from such environments, what he noticed was “a
form of public space that was undergoing a profound level
of transformation.” Concerned with questions such as
“what kind of space is a modern library” and “what exactly
is a library nowadays” and “how can you go there?” what
Wright experienced led him to comment that, “a new form
of public space may be suggesting itself.”
Wright also makes reference to the library in terms of
“infrastructures of data” [20] and proposes infrastructural
tours [21] as an experimental methodology. According to
Wright, such tours “enable new sorts of interventions and
involvement,” serve “as a design and art method,” and
provide an “institutional affordance” for the exploration of
“the cultural institution as a data institution.” Mattern [22]
notes that Star and Bowker “suggest that infrastructure is a
flexible term, often defined with regard to context and
situation” [23]. Citing an interview with Ellsworth and
Kruse of Smudge Studio, Mattern refers to “infrastructures
and landscapes as always in flux” and it would seem that it
is perhaps this ambient quality that “requires us to
continually adapt our perceptual capacities and design
parameters in order to understand and shape those
landscapes” [22]. Mattern articulates the importance of
infrastructure in relation to learning, literacy, and
engagement. Further, Mattern argues that infrastructural
literacy projects “create their own infrastructures –
informational, social, political, creative” [22]. Citing Parks
[24], Mattern refers to “our duty as infrastructural
‘citizen/users’ to be aware” [22] of our urban environment
in terms of the “systems that surround [us] that [we]
subsidize and use.” This awareness enables us to “devise
ways of visualizing and developing literacy about
infrastructures and the relations that take shape through
and around them” [24]. In the popular blog literature, it is
suggested that, “the Internet of Things is changing
people’s experience of place and space – and will continue
to change our culture” [25] with the example of “data
anthropologies” and artistic explorations of the “emerging
data landscapes we all navigate in our daily lives” [25].
Chianese, Bendedusi, Marulli, and Piccialli [26]
describe an approach to the analysis of the Internet of
Cultural Things (IoCT) that also involves data in terms of
“Cultural Heritage (CH) Asset crowdsourcing, promotion,
publication, management, and usage.” Going beyond static
cultural spaces, Chianese et al. [26] include visits to “on-
site ad-hoc (e.g., exhibitions, museums, cultural events),
territorial (historical downtown, touristic areas including
relevant CH resources), and virtual” as in, Internet based
spaces. Chianese and Piccialli [27] explore and discuss
both indoor and outdoor smart cultural environments,
designed to transform a space so as to enhance enjoyment
and satisfaction, with technology as a mediator. Chianese
and Piccialli [27] claim that the “IoT paradigm supports
the transition from a closed world” where “an object is
characterized by a descriptor” to that of “an open world”
where “objects interact with the surrounding environment”
in that “they have become intelligent.” Further, the IoT
architecture described by Chianese and Piccialli [27] for
representing and managing “the smartness inside cultural
spaces” plays “the role of connector between the physical
world” and that of information, “to amplify the
knowledge” as well as “the enjoyment.”
Wright cites the work of Mattern [22] on infrastructural
tourism and the concern that “cities, landscapes, objects
and systems that we design often interrelate with each
other independent of human involvement or awareness.”
C. Ambient Culture
Concerned with awareness, McKenna [28] theorizes
ambient culture as dynamic and active “where potentially
everyone can make, collaborate, share, and leverage.”
McKenna contends that ambient culture “is radically
current and in process” and is “emergent-continuous-
informing” while “involving people-technologies-cities in
action.” Where cultural heritage (CH) places a focus on the
past, McKenna argues that ambient culture complements
and extends existing understandings of culture and
captures the ‘now’, the in-the-moment, real time, and the
real worldness of everyday life. As such, ambient culture
supports the “open world” described in section B by
Chianese and Piccialli [27].
Rauterberg [29], drawing on the work of Marzano [30],
described ambient culture as being, “focused on the
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development of open systems that understand and support
the rituals of our living and adapt themselves to people
through time and space.” This view would seem to open
the way for Coté’s [31] suggestion that “the data we
generate can equally be regarded as a collective cultural
resource for critical and creative use increasing our data
agency.” Indeed, human libraries, described by Dobreski
and Huang [32] as “events designed to engage community
members in breaking down barriers and learning from each
other’s experiences” point to an evolving dimensionality of
libraries, suggestive of new potentials for ambient culture
and the IoCT.
Rickert [33] claims that ambience constitutes the
complete environment including “instruments, time,
equipment, atmosphere, ideas” and the person or people
present. It is worth noting that Wright makes reference to
the library in terms of “the atmosphere of data” [20],
suggestive of the ambient. And “to be transformative,”
Wright speculates that, “we may need to invent new data
relations.”
D. Conceptual Framework and Propositions
Emerging from this review of the literature on the
Internet of Cultural Things (IoCT) in the context of smart
cities and ambient culture are constructs proposed by
McKenna in the Framework for an Ambient Culture
Environment [28] – awareness, learning, openness, and
engagement.
Noticing in the city is employed in this work as a way
of exploring the constructs of awareness, learning,
openness, and engagement. Awareness encompasses aware
people and aware technologies in this study and together
with the constructs of learning, openness, and engagement
enables formulation and operationalization of a framework
for ambient culture, in support of the Internet of Cultural
Things (IoCT) and applications in smart cities.
1) Conceptual Framework for Ambient Culture
Fig. 1 depicts the ambient culture framework adapted
from the Framework for an Ambient Culture Environment
[28] and presented here for the IoCT and applications in
smart cities. The framework illustrates the three-part
dynamic of people-technologies-cities, characterized by
awareness, contributing to the IoCT and applications.
Figure 1. Ambient culture framework for IoCT & Apps in smart cities.
This urban environment of IoCT and applications enables
and is enabled by interactivities, infrastructures,
experiences, and data. Awareness, learning, openness, and
engagement emerge from, and are fostered in this
ecosystem of IoCT and applications, giving way to
ambient culture in public spaces.
2) Propositions
In response to the research questions, the following
propositions for this work are explored:
P1: Awareness manifests in continuous, diverse, and
creative ways in contemporary urban ambient culture
environments.
P2: Ambient culture informs, supports, and evolves
learning in contemporary urban environments.
P3: Openness is emergent, evolving, and complex in
contemporary urban ambient culture environments.
P4: Engagement takes diverse, serendipitous, and
variously constituted forms in contemporary urban
ambient culture environments.
IV. METHODOLOGY
The research design for this work used an emergent,
exploratory case study approach, appropriate for the study
of contemporary phenomena, according to Yin [34]. Two
iterations of the study are described with the first involving
a minimally viable city-focused social media webspace
and the second involving a discussion of such spaces.
A. Process
This study invited a cross-section of people in
discussions about their experience of the city as smart.
Study participation accommodated individuals across six
categories: city officials, business, community members,
educators, students, and visitors to the city. Online study
registration involved the gathering of minimal
demographic information (e.g., age range, city, and self-
identification in one or more of the six categories).
In iteration one of the study, participants were given
access to a minimally viable city-focused social media
webspace and invited to contribute details about their city
related to noticing and ideas. Content contributed by
participants was viewable in real time by other
participants. Participants were then invited to discuss their
experience of the webspace and their city in an interview
about smart cities, with an option to complete an online
survey. In iteration two of the study, participants were
invited to complete an online survey, with the option to
discuss smart cities in more detail through an interview.
B. Data Collection
Interview data provided the main source of qualitative
evidence for this study along with responses to open-ended
survey questions. The minimally viable city-focused
webspace along with online surveys provided the source
for quantitative data. This work contains a diversity of
voices, ranging from postsecondary students, to
information technology professionals, to educators, to
community members, to city government officials, to
urban designers, to business.
In parallel with this study, anecdotal evidence was also
gathered in the form of qualitative data from individual
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and group discussions conducted with a wide range of
people across the city from Toronto to Victoria to
Vancouver. Cubitt [35] makes a “claim for the anecdote as
a viable and vital form of evidence” arguing that “the
power of anecdote is to bring us to the absolute specificity
of experience” forcing “us to confront the materiality of
people, things, and events” in order to understand that “the
human cannot be separated from the technical, physical, or
organic environments.”
C. Data Analysis
Qualitative data from interviews, discussions, and
open-ended survey questions were analyzed using content
analysis, employed inductively. Using a deductive
approach, content analysis was also used, drawing on
terms from the research literature to further guide data
analysis. Quantitative data from use of the city-focused
social media webspace along with survey responses were
analyzed using descriptive statistics.
Anecdotal evidence from discussions gathered in
parallel with this study supported further data analysis,
comparison, and triangulation for further insight and rigor.
D. Summary
Overall, data were analyzed for an n=40 spanning age
ranges of people in their 20s to their 70s, consisting of
30% females and 70% males. People responded to the
study from small to medium to large Canadian cities (e.g.,
Saint John’s to Victoria to Ottawa) and extending to
European cities (e.g., Jyvaskyla to Valetta). The voices of
individuals across the city included those representative of
business (technology, tourism, etc.), government (city
officials/policymakers, staff), educators (secondary and
postsecondary – business, technology, urban dialogue and
design, etc.), students (postsecondary –
engineering/design/computing, education, media, etc.), and
community members (academics, IT professionals, urban
placemakers and designers, engagement specialists, and
policy influencers).
V. FINDINGS
Findings from this study are presented in terms of an
analysis of propositions responding to each of the research
questions. Each proposition incorporates one of the four
constructs used to explore the IoCT and applications as
ambient culture in 21 st century smart cities.
A. Awareness and Ambient Culture
Awareness of culture in the city emerged in the form of
discussions of a wide range of urban elements noticed by
people. The importance of the architecture of a city was
articulated as important by a Victoria community member
and in Jyvaskyla, an educator commented on the
“uplifting” aspect of architecture in contrast with “those
functional buildings of the 50s and 60s.” Another
community member in Victoria spoke of “ways to animate
a space,” where a city parkade was embedded with sensor
technology that “plays different sounds as you go up based
on where you are in the stairwell” and the “lighting
changes.” This work is described as “art in public places,”
is supported by the city, and provides an example of an
initiative extending across multiple domains in support of
local technology, arts, culture, and cross-sector urban
collaboration, characteristic of smart cities. A city
councilor is quoted as saying the musical railing is
“designed to ensure that civic parkades are safe and
welcoming” pointing to safety, engagement, cultural, and
other benefits (http://bit.ly/290HwIg).
Cultural heritage was mentioned in a variety of ways in
the city of St. John’s, beginning with the The Loop, an
outdoor “park downtown” that has a “kind of infinity loop
for skating” outdoors and “provides a kind of central point
for the winter” as a public space. As an emergent
technology dimension, in the moment, a glimpse of this
space was shared in the media [36], providing a drone-
captured overview of the infinity/figure-eight space, lit up
at night, in use by many people. An educator in Europe
described a mobile cloud application developed “to capture
and share insights, feedback and knowledge” that is
“simple, cost efficient” with “instant awareness” intended
for a range of urban activities including “business, design,
health, infrastructure, learning, safety, sport, tourism.”
A newly developed mixed-use space in Saint John’s
called The Rooms, was described as an “integrated library,
music, museum,” consisting of “a mix of a library and a
restaurant and meeting rooms and music rooms” forming
“a cultural center piece for the community.” Historically, it
was recounted that, “fishermen had stages” where “they
kept their nets” and other gear, “sort of like a garage on a
platform on stilts” and this space was “called the room.”
These findings support proposition 1 – Awareness
manifests in continuous, diverse, and creative ways in
contemporary urban ambient culture environments.
B. Learning and Ambient Culture
In St. John’s, while The Rooms provides a space for
learning about history and traditions related to the city and
the province more generally, it was suggested that cities
“have to provide a greater sense of the cultural
differentiating aspect of the city.” Reference was made to
the importance of the ocean location with “icebergs in the
summer” floating by and the “deep cultural base”
highlighting “music and drama” contributing to a “cultural
communications oral tradition.” In Valetta, the entire city
was described as being “almost like one giant museum”
and as “literally the city of culture.” The comment was
made that “learning becomes subsumed” in “what you’re
doing everyday, all the time.” As such, “you’re all learning
all the time” and “you’re sharing knowledge.” Reference
was made to “looking into” the potential in Valetta for
“geofence location-based content” for learning, a practice
said to be in use by cities [37].
An educator in Victoria described attending a
conference where a speaker also includes a screen with
Twitter feeds as a multi-modal form of education and
sharing. The social media space of Twitter extended the
conference beyond itself so that, “you’ve got 500 people at
a conference but you’ve actually got 5000 that are
participating in that conference through the Twitter feed.”
The educator noted that, “it adds great richness particularly
when that conversation” is moderated and compiled to
record “what really took place,” making it, “not just fun,
but I think very meaningful.”
These findings support proposition 2 – Ambient culture
informs, supports, and evolves learning in contemporary
urban environments.
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C. Openness and Ambient Culture
In St. John’s, Quidi Vidi Lake was highlighted for
music, rowing, and other outdoor cultural events in the
summer. In Jyvaskyla the presence of outdoor events
during the summer highlighted the openness of the culture
while Valetta was described as an outdoor culture where
“everybody eats outside” and “people watch movies
outside.” In Jyvaskyla, the OpenAir gym was described as
“public and free” in support of a culture of exercise and
well being. A technology piece for the OpenAir gym is
anticipated in terms of the posting online of “video
instructions and a sample exercise programme”
(http://bit.ly/2904khn). Also in Jyvaskyla, the importance
of open innovation was identified with application
development as “societal pilots” incorporating multi-media
with the “capture of data in the form of video, pictures,
audio, and text.” Emphasis was placed on being attentive
to the participation and feedback of people about their
communities, encouraging engagement and the generation
of actionable data, as in, “efficiently processed and acted
upon” for planning and decision-making and not just
“something symbolic.” Discussing “open data archives,” it
was noted in Valetta that “as we work out how to sort out
the data that is constantly being made, built, we will know
more what to do with it” contributing to “notions of smart
delivery.”
A city councilor in Victoria described how “we held
our first interactive e-TownHall and we were able to get
feedback from people watching the live stream so we have
a packed house in person and also an overflow room with
hundreds tweeting, sending direct messages that we could
respond to.”
While Victoria city councilors and staff are excited
about the potential of open data, they are also attentive to
privacy concerns and regulations. For example, cycling
data is shared visually on a real time display as cyclists use
an urban multi-use trail. One staff member commented
that, “fundamentally there is a desire to be very, very open
with the data” adding that “it is public data, we manage on
behalf of the citizenry” and “where there is a purpose to
utilize that data” access is important because “maybe it
helps improve something.” A community member in
Toronto commented that “zoning and development data” is
one of most requested forms of data “from the city by the
public.” This individual suggested that when municipal
government datasets are made available, “the element of
marketing and communications” is needed to say, “with
this dataset you could build” such and such, inviting and
opening the way for participation.
These findings support proposition 3 – Openness is
emergent, evolving, and complex in contemporary urban
ambient culture environments.
D. Engagement and Ambient Culture
In St. John’s, the need was expressed for “anywhere
Internet” and being “smart about how we use” technology.
In terms of “providing historical information in an
interesting way,” reference was made to “historical walks”
and the reenactment of historical events through “dramatic
types of events where you walk around a little town with
actors who play different roles in different places based on
what occurred there over the centuries.” A community
group in Victoria described their blog as a social media
 space, highlighting one of their most active and interactive
posts about ‘library boxes’. Community library boxes for
the free sharing and exchange of books triggered multiple
forms of spontaneously generated and unexpected interest
and engagement. Interactivities were described in terms of
Twitter activity, Google mapping, new connections,
participation, and video sharing about the library boxes.
The community member commented that, “the technology
and the space are all kind of parts of the same puzzle.” In
Jyvaskyla, appreciation was expressed by an educator that
“the infrastructure is reliable” as a “user of the city.”
These findings support proposition 4 – Engagement
takes diverse, serendipitous, and variously constituted
forms in contemporary urban ambient culture
environments.
E. Summary
An overview of findings is presented in Table 1 for
each proposition and the corresponding construct –
awareness, learning, openness, and engagement –
providing examples that emerged in this study in terms of
IoCT and applications as ambient culture in 21 st century
smart cities.
TABLE I. OVERVIEW OF FINDINGS
Constructs IoCT Apps
Awareness Musical rails in Parkade; Mobile cloud mRails; etc.
Learning Conference speaker+Live Twitter feed eMedia
Openness eTownHall; cycling data (CRD-Track) eMedia
Engagement Library Box+Social media Blog; etc.
Some participants found the minimally viable city-
focused social-media webspace to be an interesting
concept with limited functionality, pointing instead to
existing Internet platforms and mobile apps as providing
some aspects of this type of service.
DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
Awareness and ambient culture emerged most vividly
in this study in the form of an interactive musical rails
project in a city parkade of Victoria involving a diverse
mix of people, skills, and collaborations. Indeed, the notion
of public space transforms in an ambient culture context to
encompass also the space of the Internet. In support of
real-time sharing and instant awareness was a mobile
cloud application described by an educator in Jyvaskyla.
As if to dissolve and make permeable the boundaries of
learning and cultural institutions, an individual described
Valetta as “almost like one giant museum.” Similarly, the
use of Twitter feeds during a conference presentation
points to the fluidity of the online world of the Internet,
expanding and extending everyday spaces into a
continuum for learning and culture. Cultural heritage as a
defining feature and competitive advantage for a city was
highlighted in St. John’s. “The Rooms” downtown
development as a “cultural center piece for the
community” embodies a mixed-use urban space,
characteristic of smart cities. However, it was noted that 54
libraries are under review for proposed closure across the
province to save money. While learning and literacy is
associated with libraries, this closure of libraries
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juxtaposed with the emergent interest in the exchange of
books evident at the community level, with the library box
phenomena, also known as the little free library movement
– described as a kind of placemaking – may serve to
inform other initiatives [10], [20] to understand the role of
libraries in 21 st century society.
Openness emerged in a range of ways in this work,
from the way city government is conducted using the
example of an eTownHall format to the dynamic tracking
and sharing of cycling data on a public display as part of
the infrastructure of a multi-use trail in Victoria. The value
of data, of open data, and of data infrastructures were
recognized by Victoria city staff and community members
alike, in that, this information is important in the context of
the “investment in bike infrastructure” for example.
Possibly complementing and extending existing
government open datasets, a multi-purpose app was
described by an educator in Jyvaskyla, as a “mobile cloud-
based app to capture and share insights, feedback and
knowledge” and was identified as important because it is
“simple, cost efficient” and supports “instant awareness.”
A public engagement specialist in Victoria described the
diversity and range of such apps and their value for citizen
engagement and for learning more about city spaces.
While cities were described as necessarily conservative
when it comes to data and privacy and the purpose of data
collection, one participant identified the challenge of, “not
knowing what to do with the data.” Others shared
comments on “how you might find purpose for the data.”
Engagement and the three other constructs described
here, although discussed separately, it should be noted that
they are very much overlapping and interweaving. A
community leader in Victoria described the library box
phenomena as an illustration of “that desire to engage.”
The ‘library box’ phenomena as it is emerging and playing
out in Greater Victoria provides an example of the
interweaving of the interactions of people, technology,
cultural things as books, making as in library box
infrastructure constructions, and a range of social media
tools and spaces for sharing about the exchanges that
occur. As such, a type of ambient culture in the form of
infrastructural elements and social interventions emerges
in different communities around the city. Regarding the
eTownHall experience in Victoria, a city councilor
commented on the actionable feedback received in social
media and other real time spaces. And from a community
placemaking perspective, ways to animate a space in the
city in Victoria were described in terms of the desire to
“create something that is interactive using technology in
public spaces.”
In summary, this operationalization of the ambient
culture framework for IoCT and applications in smart
cities evolves an understanding of culture as becoming
ambient, emergent, and in the moment. And possibly, this
understanding gives way to the notion of ambient heritage
in a smart city context, extending other conceptualizations
[38] with more immediacy than ‘virtual heritage’.
Combining more aware people with aware technologies
contributes further to the ambient culture concept as a
smarter adaptive mechanism where learning can occur
more readily and meaningfully in the city. As such, the
learning city can become an enabler of ambient culture and
vice versa. The dynamic nature of cities, enabling
malleable and porous spaces, contributes to the potential
for non-fixed notions of culture, as in, ambient culture. In
this way, ambient culture opens the potential for emerging
understandings, opportunities, and challenges for the IoCT
and applications.
This work has implications for definitions of culture
and heritage in 21st century technology-pervasive urban
environments. In turn, this work also has implications for
policymakers and for the nature of relationships between
and among cities, academia, industry, libraries, and the arts
and culture communities in terms of meaningfully
involving citizens in research and practice going forward.
An additional insight emerging from this work is the
importance of interactivities, infrastructures, experiences,
and data as enablers and drivers of ambient culture and the
IoCT and applications.
VI. CHALLENGES AND MITIGATIONS
Key challenges of this work related to small sample
size are mitigated by in-depth and rich detail from a wide
range of individuals across small to medium to large urban
centers. Challenges related to geographic locations are
mitigated by the potential to extend this work to other
cities, including megacities and regions exceeding 10
million people. Although working with a minimally viable
city focused social media webspace provided challenges
for participants who may have expected a fully and highly
functioning product, these were mitigated by additional
details provided during interviews.
Anecdotal evidence collected from individual and
group discussions conducted in parallel with this study,
contributed added rigor through further data analysis,
comparison, and triangulation and is considered to be an
important source of data by Cubitt [35] and others [39].
The challenge of studying emergent, invisible, and
ambient phenomena is mitigated by opportunities to
creatively discover and collaboratively explore the IoCT
and applications in the making of spaces, infrastructures,
and data environments to advance research and practice.
VII. CONCLUSION
This work provides an exploration of the emerging
domain of ambient culture in urban environments in the
context of 21st century smart cities. Through the interactive
dynamic of people – technologies – cities, the constructs of
awareness, learning, openness, and engagement are
explored in relation to ambient culture.
Key contributions of this work include: a)
conceptualization of ambient culture in relation to the
IoCT and applications for contemporary urban
environments; b) further development of the research and
practice literature for smart cities generally and for the
ambient culture literature in particular; c) theorizing and
operationalization of the ambient culture framework for
the IoCT and applications; d) the opening of a discourse
space for evolving understandings of culture as dynamic,
emergent, and continuous in the context of the IoCT and
applications; e) and extending of the discourse space for
ambient heritage.
A key take away from this work is the transformative
potential of an ambient culture perspective for the IoCT
and applications in the context of aware people and aware
technologies in 21st century urban environments. This
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421
interdisciplinary paper will be of interest to urban planners
and designers, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners
in multiple domains including creativity, cultural heritage,
IoCT and applications, libraries, museums, and anyone
concerned with learning cities and smarter cities.
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