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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper.

Our summary today works with the response article titled On the  difficulty of agreeing upon a universal logic for city standards from 2019 by James Merricks White, published in the City – analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action journal. This article is the response to the last research episode’s debate article, by Schindler and Marvin which was about three standards for the future of cities, and I highly encourage everyone to check that as well. But I thought it would be interesting to hear the contra arguments. This response article investigates and corrects Schindler and Marvin’s mistake of leaving out the system in which the chosen three ISO standards were conceptualised.

White started with the importance of standards in urban areas as standards helped in urban sanitation and regulation, building codes, land use regulations, shaping the built environment. But beside the regulatory standards, voluntary ones have been appearing, and those deserve critical attention and debate. And just as a recap, Schindler and Marvin were investigating the following three standards: ISO37120:2014 sustainable development of communities – indicators for city services and quality of life; ISO37101:2016 sustainable development in communities – management system for sustainable development – requirements with guidance for use; and ISO30182:2017 smart city concept model – guidance for establishing a model for data interoperability. They found that the standardisation efforts can be questionable the least.

Many agencies established city standards, such as the Directory of Smart and Sustainable Cities Standardization Initiatives and Related Activities of American National Standards Institute, abbreviated to ANSI, from 2014, the SG20: Internet of Things and smart cities and communities of the International Telecommunications Union, also known as ITU, Systems Committee on Smart cities of the International Electrotechnical Commission, known as IEC, and the International Organization of Standardization’s many different initiatives. There are even joint efforts between ISO and IEC which also have produced standards in urban fields. These all are connected to other international standardisation bodies from Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain. There are even more assessments and rating systems, mind maps, and technology assesments.

However, urban studies are not yet agreeing on what city standards mean for urban life, infrastructure, governance and the future of cities. White agreed with Schindler and Marvin on this, but found their statement that city standards express a universal logic of control rather problematic. According to White, many questions arose, like how voluntary standards are developed, who participates in this process and how, which organisations are most heavily involved in city standards, how they differ and how they have interacted with one another, what the answers to these questions mean for how urban studies should approach standards, methodologically and politically?

White also acknowledged that the many aspects influencing standard creation make difficult to agree upon an international standard based on a universal logic. It is an intensely political process, and rather than some technical optimum, the results are an irregular patchwork of approaches and solutions. The success of an ISO standard is in their circulation and implementation, not in their publication.

To answer these questions, White continued with the introduction of the ISO. The organisation was established right after the Second World War, substituting the Standards Coordinating Committee which was working during the war. Throughout its history, it arrived to be the foremost developer of international voluntary standards by its technical committees. The nations that are ISO members have the right to observe or participate in the technical committees, typically establishing a mirror national-level committee. The Technical Committee 268 is the one specialising in sustainable cities and communities with 38 participating and 21 observing members. Each participating member can influence the creation or acceptance of the standards.

Although the created standards are voluntary, they are created with the intention to intervene the whole world. But they are rarely enforced by a sovereign state, just adopted voluntarily by individuals, firms or industries. To accomplish the aim of intervening the whole world, the standards are published and made available and promoted by their creators.

As an example, White told the establishment of the TC268. The New Work Item Proposal from the Japanese Industrial Standards Committee was submitted to the ISO Technical Management Board, and there were two other submissions: Technical Subject Proposal 224 Sustainable development in communities by the Association Francaise de Normalisation and a proposal for an international standard on global city indicators by the Global City Indicators Facility. Since they were complementary, covering different aspect of city and community indicators, infrastructures and utilities, the TC268 was established based on these proposals in February of 2012. This perfectly represents, that since its conception, the TC268 was an amalgation of interests. Although the proposals set out to standardise urban metrics, their approaches were quite different.

The Technical Committee 268 published their business plan in November 2013. It described the purpose to develop management systems and related tools and techniques to support the sustainable development and resiliency of communities with requirement and guidance standards on related topics. They highlighted a list of city movements: sustainable, green, resilient or smart cities, all of which are said to be struggling with a lack of harmonised guidance.

Smart city is a really great example of the committee’s heterogeneity: initially, it was not the scope, but as the hype train arrived, smart city became increasingly associated with the standardisation efforts. Within the committee, there are differences in understanding the smart city, or even including the smart city on the expense of the sustainable communities. These controversies were not solved with the new business plan in 2016, or the new initiatives such as the ISO 37105 Descriptive framework for cities and communities and ISO 37106: Guidance on establishing smart city operating models for sustainable communities. The member national committees have different visions for the ISO Technical Committee, and one of them described the Committee as a lot of different ornaments on a Christmas Tree.

The TC268 is home to many of the international standards attending cities but being incoherent. It refers in different documents to cities and communities, sustainabilty, resiliency, smartness management systems, smart infrastrucutres, performance metrics, global city benchmarking and quality of life. Therefore, it should be regarded as a composite of interests with differing and at time conflicting agendas. It became associated with the smart city with different understanding and implementation strategies.

As the technical committee behind the investigated standards in Schindler and Marvin’s article is so diverse, it is misleading to argue that they represent a universal logic of control. According to White, to treat the standards as the same risks overstating their intentionality. The standards approach cities at a tangent, like through software development or system engineering, and they fumble trough mistakes and disagreements but arrive at well-polished document. To those who are immersed in urban studies, the final document can seem dangerously reductive and hopelessly naïve. However, regardless of being messy and political, these standards are of significance.

The investigations of these standards start from the statement of they are being part of the ISO hence they need to be cohesive, rigorous and thoroughly tested, leaving out the understanding of how political the creation can be. Plus they are read to be universal. Therefore, analytically it is not enough to read and critique published standards, according to White. The creation and the creating body also needs to be understood and analysed. Furthermore, the standard receives its significance and understanding in implementation and circulation, so it may be more important to see how cities and communities select, interpret and apply. Moreover, standards need to be recognised as their true nature instead of seeing them as instruments of political persuasion.

The best way to critique a standard is not confront it head on but to pull back the curtain and reveal the mundane workings of the wizard. Additionally, if one accepts that the field of city standards development is uneven and in flux, then there becomes an opportunity to engage more positively with the community by forging alliances and upsetting taken-for-granted assumptions. Historically, standards have improved the lives of the urban poor and marginalised, and it is not so radical to suppose that they may continue to do so.

As the most important things, I would like to highlight three aspects:

1. It is important to understand the wizard working behind the scenes to truly understand the standards.
2. The standards real value relies in implementation and circulation not in publishing. So the result is in the pudding.
3. The creation of standards is a messy and rather political process, therefore this must be taken into account when investigating.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. What is the real role of standards if one to understand in details must go to the whole creation process? If someone wants to apply a standard, they will just use the standard without a whole investigation into its conception and therefore may loose many of the original intentions, so to speak.
2. Why do cities need standards with their future? Standardisation is really useful in specifics, such as the charger of a phone, or the head of a screw, but as the future of cities seems to be specific for each city not globally, the standardisation may cause problems rather than solving those.
3. How have standards improved generally the quality of life if they are not forced by nations but adopted by individuals?

What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up questions? Let me know on Twitter @WTF4Cities or on the website where the transcripts and show notes are available! I hope this was an interesting research for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

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