ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that human and environmental values should also be part of the design and implementation of smart city systems, especially since these systems influence the way cities operate. Albert Borgmann's concepts of device paradigm and focal practice were used to challenges normalized understandings of the smart city and pointed to some of the shortcomings of deploying sensors and collecting data as an efficient instrumentalist process in lieu of participatory sensing activities. Citizen science is a scientific practice where non-professional researchers are involved in the process of conducting research, and it is a type of science which can insert agency and control into the smart city. The city is also a place for collective action and communal activities with good potential for developing new focal practices around data collection, processing and use. Do-It-Yourself (DIY) science is emerging from the same technological trends that make the smart city a possibility, but with a fundamentally different ethos, focus and processes.
