Do smart cities need smart contracts? Community Benefits Agreements as blockchain-enabled accountability frameworks

Ushnish Sengupta

Chapter 24 in Handbook of Platform Urbanism, 2025, pp 321-334 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: There is an increasing interest from the business, scientific and policy-making communities in understanding the potential links and relationships between the risks and benefits of platform urbanism projects. There is a gap in the literature in understanding how the intersection of platform urbanism and smart cities can be designed to create greater benefits for local communities and decrease risks. This chapter focuses on the key concept of Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) to explore the potentially beneficial or detrimental relationships between smart city projects and communities impacted by the implementation of platform technologies. By exploring smart city projects through a Community Benefits Agreements framework, issues of equitable benefit and risk across different communities are identified. The lack of formal accountability to equity-seeking communities in smart city projects is highlighted as a relational dynamic with a direct impact on social and environmental justice issues.

Keywords: Smart cities; Community benefit agreements; Accountability; Digital transformation blockchain; Smart contracts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035313754
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