Facilitating Better Deliberation about Smart Cities: Designing a Meta-deliberation Instrument

In smart cities, deliberation between public professionals and discontented citizens risks devolving into a ‘dialogue of the deaf’, where parties talk past each other due to differing perceptions of what constitutes good deliberation. Meta-deliberation offers a promising direction to raise awareness of this risk, encourage reflection on differing perceptions, and anticipate tensions. However, its potential remains unexplored, and practical instruments are lacking. Therefore, Design Science Research (DSR) was used to develop a practice-oriented, academically grounded meta-deliberation instrument guided by six standards of deliberative quality, for public professionals in smart city contexts. The instrument is informed by academic insights and interviews with public professionals (n=17), and was evaluated by experts (n=9) and professionals (n=2x3). This study contributes academically by showcasing the potential of meta-deliberation to address a dialogue of the deaf, methodologically by applying DSR to smart city governance challenges, and practically by designing an instrument to improve government-citizen interactions.