Right to the digital Twin City? citizen participation and limits-by-design in Rotterdam's urban digital twin

Digital technologies like Urban digital Twins (UDTs) are propagated by urban designers and administrators to render urban governance processes ‘smarter’. Hailed for their capacity to visualize complex urban redevelopment plans, simulate costs and benefits and offer tools for citizen co-creation, UDTs are the latest buzz in the field of citizen participation. Up to date, the literature on UDTs does little more than echoing this potential and highlighting applications. Building on the literature on smart urbanism, this paper introduces a critical perspective centered around the ‘Right to the Digital Twin City’ (RDTC) to empirically examine UDTs' potential to stimulate citizen power over processes of digital - and physical - urban development processes. Focusing on a case study of a UDT pilot project in Rotterdam, we demonstrate that effective citizen participation was hindered by limits-by-design. We show that urban planners and administrators set out the boundaries of the possible by controlling the UDT's design, failing to integrate it within the municipality's broader decision-making structure and limiting communication during the process. Furthermore, citizen participation in the UDT was hindered by the digital divide, language barriers, and government distrust. These research findings reveal technical and political limits-by-design that prevent the RDTC from being realized. • Urban digital Twins (UDTs) are hailed as interactive tools for citizen participation. • Actors involved in developing UDTs set out the boundaries of imaginaries. • The Right to the Digital Twin City (RDTC) presumes citizen power over urban development. • Limits-by-design undermine UDTs ability to realize residents' RDTC.