This book reveals how digital fault-reporting platforms (re)configure the meaning of the (good) citizen in the smart city era and in turn, influence urban governance in contemporary democratic regimes. Through comparative case studies across four European cities — Bristol, Zurich, Nantes, and Malmö — the book shows how the embedding of these platforms within urban infrastructures consequently encodes specific civic subjectivities and modes of governing, defining what represents responsible, compliant citizenship and illuminates how digital participation reshapes the everyday functioning and legitimacy of local government. As such, it demonstrates how the datafication and automation of participatory processes and instruments also opens space for more subversive appropriations with implications for democratic participation and political dialogue. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of critical urban governance, democratic innovation, digital government studies and more broadly to urban studies and political science.
