The Continued Transformation of the Public Sphere On the Road to Smart Cities, Living Labs and a New Understanding of Society

This chapter explores the transformation of the public sphere by Smart Cities and Living Labs. It explores this transformation by analysing three data-driven projects in cities around the world. These projects raise significant legal and ethical concerns because they transform and challenge valuable elements of the public sphere. The first section provides the reader with a theoretical lens for this chapter by briefly describing features of a meaningful public sphere as proposed by Jürgen Habermas and discussing the concepts of Living Labs and Smart Cities. In section two, three and four, three cases are analysed, namely the smart nation project of Singapore, Google’s Living Lab ‘Sidewalk’ in Toronto, Canada, and the Living Lab ‘Stratums Eind 2.0’ in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. These cases will be used to revisit the concept of the public sphere and its transformations as proposed by Jürgen Habermas. We propose that smart Cities and Living Labs challenge important features of an open, neutral and democratic public sphere by raising several ethical and legal concerns.