Page 76 - U4SSC Blockchain for smart sustainable cities

(1) Changes in the stakeholders’ relationship and their role
The city becomes smarter when it experiences changes in the relationship between the stakeholders
in different ways. Making a city smarter is built by collaboration among a collective of stakeholders that
have different roles and capabilities, in order for the effort to be successful. Blockchain technology,
by definition, changes the relationship between the stakeholders. However, in 30 per cent of the
cases there were no significant changes in the relationship between stakeholders. All the rest of the
cases identified different types of change such as the inclusion of new stakeholders (i.e. Georgia Land
registry), or moving from a passive role to a more active role (i.e. e-vote for cell towers). Changes in
nature and the frequencies of interactions were observed (i.e. in the case of financial emergency or the
health cases, among others). The empowerment of the citizens or the residents of the city constitutes
a drastic change in the power dynamic allowed by the blockchain technology properties. For a smarter
city, citizens need to be fully involved and gain from the use of innovative and disruptive technologies
(Table 4, Appendix 2). Blockchain is enabling the citizens by providing them with access to the data
(role of reader) and allowing them to write in the system (role of a writer) and to keep the records
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of the data.
For 50 per cent use-cases, allowing the citizens to read the data is very important to ensure transparency
and good governance such as citizen participation and collaborative decision making. Only 75 per cent
of the use-cases provide the need to have authorization (under defined circumstances). Citizens as
end-users should be the primary target and should benefit from more efficient transactions (e.g. fast
and inexpensive payments), increased transparency, verifiability and accuracy of the information,
and ability to control their data and identity from the public services. Blockchain will, in this sense,
contribute to improve and/or transform the relationship and interaction between the citizens and the
public services, in order to reduce power abuse and corruption.

(2) The blockchain for cities impacts the smart domains

Six domains that provide tools to achieve integrated and open governance, promote cooperation and
co-decision making, while incorporating the active participation of citizens: (1) smart economy, (2)
smart mobility, (3) smart environment, (4) smart people, (5) smart living and (6) smart governance.
The UNU-EGOV framework on smart city (Figure 5) maps the domains within the process of becoming
smarter in terms of the context, inputs, transformations and outcomes. Historically, the evolution
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of the smart city concept is driven mainly by technological progress, which explains the failure of
the project. The main issue with blockchain projects is also the hype and the overemphasis on the
technological aspects. Most of the use-cases presented in the report are contributing to one or more
of the smart domains identified. However, some of the cases are more motivated by technological
innovation than by providing a solution to a specific domain. In this case, the solutions are associated
to more than one domain, which explains the unclear definition of the smart domain process and the
outcomes in some cases very generic and not clear. Moreover, some of the blockchain-based initiatives
and pilot implementation projects will struggle to achieve a significant uptake and retention of the
technology due to the inability to engage and actively involve the users, especially the citizens.

66 U4SSC: Blockchain for smart sustainable cities