ABSTRACT
Technology is not always living up to its promises. The idea of smart cities has been around for over ten years and is finally gaining traction. Urban data platforms are being adopted across Europe. However, smart cities still struw-gle to engage citizens. Also struggling is the internet. Many, including the founder of the World Wide Web, feel that it is broken: hijacked by big tech, trapping us into filter bubbles. How can the use of personal data remedy both of these struggles? With control over our personal data using personal data vaults, we could limit exposure to unwanted manipulation online. Next, by rendering our personal data for solving societal problems, we help improve smart city services. Finally, we can use insights from our integrated personal data to change our own behaviour and become truly smart citizens. Sounds too good to be true? Maybe. But more importantly, let us not repeat past mistakes and, this time, put in place measures to identify and resolve adverse effects. EU legislation and European values are foundational measures. In addition, by using scenario thinking, we propose two broad strategies for finding more measures. One is adopting a human-centric paradigm, rather than an economic paradigm. The other is adopting a contextual-values parw-digm rather than an individualistic paradigm. We recommend that the use of 6personal data should not be left to technocrats with an exploitative mind set. It should be handled by city designers that can indeed imagine utopia and craft a path towards it.
