Personas, the Pandemic, and Inclusive, Synthetic, Smart City Planning

ABSTRACT

In the era of COVID-19, planners, and more broadly, city administrators and policy makers, have learned to cope with the accelerated pace of change, the broad band of uncertainty, and the need for rapid decision-making strategies. In the context of ever more diverse communities and greater reliance on technology as an effective response to the social and public health challenges of the pandemic, "smart" cities harness distributed communication and service delivery technologies to enhance the quality of urban life. The voices of citizens from marginalized and under-served populations, such as older adults and people with disabilities, are vital to the development of inclusive smart cities. In this paper, expanding an inclusive policy design approach is proposed that uses `personas' to actively engage those citizens.