Technological Forecasting & Social Change 128 (2018) 226–234

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Technological Forecasting & Social Change

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/techfore

Future living framework: Is blockchain the next enabling network? T

Maria-Lluïsa Marsal-Llacuna
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, ICT Engineering Department, Tànger 122-140, 08018 Barcelona, Spain

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Blockchain is not the first -and certainly will not be the last- network fever we will experience. This paper shows
Blockchain how blockchain networks will disrupt the urban context as well, similarly to what it is happening in the fintech
Smart cities and insurtech spaces, among many other emerging application domains. We put forward the Future Living
Urban technologies Framework as the meta use case of a wider research called Blockchain4Cities. In this use case, which uses UN's
Urban networks
New Urban Agenda (NUA) as exemplifying model, we show the benefits of using blockchain in the urban field
New urban agenda
Quito implementation plan
and we do so by breaking down the NUA in policies, planning, regulations and standards and dissecting these
further into Quito's Implementation Plan (QIP) themes and scopes. Use case results confirm that blockchain will
disrupt urban networks, like Cybernetics did in 1948, Ekistics a decade later, and the Metabolists and Webbists in
the late sixties. The Ubiquitous Computing arrived later, in the seventies, and disrupted all the previous network
efforts, lasting until the current Internet of Things (IoT) and its sister concept Smart Cities, when IoT is used in an
urban context. Blockchain is here to take on and be the next network for cities.

1. Do we need new urban networks?
Our urban codes (policies, planning, regulations and standards) are
not succeeding in tackling our current urban challenges since they
haven't been meeting today's sustainability requirements and goals.
Let's analyse first Environmental Sustainability. With all environ-
mental regulation and rule of law in place -at both national and inter-
national levels-, and stacks of technology supporting these (electric
cars, solar panels, CO2 accountability systems, etc.) we should have the
cleanest air ever! Unfortunately, just to give an example, some cities in
Asia are recording the highest pollution levels of their history.
On the Social aspect of Sustainability, how is it possible that, after
all international agreements, treaties, charters, and many other codes
meant to support Social Sustainability, we, humans, instead of building
the greatest urban settlements ever we are destroying our best cities?
Think of cities in Syria as an example. And, it is not only that these
current societal codes fail, we have great social technological tools but
we are not using their possibilities in the most helpful way. I wonder,
are social media apps mostly used to help and empower integration,
equality, acceptance, tolerance, justice, etc. I guess not.
The big one is Economic Sustainability. So many trade deals, em-
ployment programmes, financial agreements, entrepreneurship
schemes, etc., lots of economic conventions made available for our
societies to have good economic performance. But it is not only that
some countries are recording their highest unemployment rates, also
their worse homeless figures ever. Some blame the technology for this,
arguing that current automation triggers an unprecedented ‘middleman
crises’ which is causing unskilled people to lose their jobs. No, the
technology is not the cause of our poor economic performance.
Technology definitively empowers people since new skills are in con-
tinuous demand and therefore traditional professions have the oppor-
tunity to be reengineered and thus new jobs are created.
Then, if it is not the technology, do we have to blame the codes? Our
current codes (including urban codes) are still a legacy of the first
Babylonians. We are still using Hammurabi's top-down approach to
governance and giving power to centralised authorities to make sure
the status quo is not disrupted. It is not the code itself what needs to be
reimagined, but its delivery network. And since the existence of virtual
networks, codes' delivery networks consist of both physical and virtual
networks.
Physical and virtual networks had and still have a romance.
Specifically to the urban context this romance starts in the early sixties
when Constantinos Doxiadis, together with a group of architects and
telecommunication engineers including Buckminster Fuller (1963) and
Mc Luhan (1962), created the Ekistics movement (Dioxadis, 1968) to
study and anticipate the effects of what they foresaw as excessive
growth of urban settlements, facilitated by what they called “network
fever”.
Thus, the Ekistics were the first to merge physical and virtual net-
works and understand the urban space as a combination of both.
Ekistics sustained that the real dimension of cities was not space but
time. Well known examples of this are Dioxadis's Chicago

E-mail address: lluisa.marsal@upf.edu.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2017.12.005
Received 16 August 2017; Received in revised form 31 October 2017; Accepted 5 December 2017
Available online 12 December 2017
0040-1625/ © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
M.-L. Marsal-Llacuna
Transportation Study, the so called Cartographatrons of Desire Lines, in
1959; the Electromagnetic Maps of City Growth, by Dioxadis in 1962; the
USA as Single City, Dioxadis 1963. This physicovirtual network fervour
became clear in the City of the Future project that Doxiadis launched in
1960 and kept working on it until his death. The City of the Future
predicts the emergence of a single city covering the whole earth like a
lava lamp network, a biomorphic growth extending itself everywhere
(Wigley, 2001).
The Ekistics movement was continued by the Metabolists (Renzo
Tange, Arata Isozaki, Kisho Kurokawa are the well-known ones), and
later the Neofuturists (Cedric Prize, the Archigram group, among
others), which then were followed by the Webbists (mainly Khan and
Tyng, Jackson Pollock, and Andre Waterkeyn) (Friedman, 1971, 1978).
The architectural and urbanistic expressions of these avant-garde
groups were physical representations of virtual networks and flows. The
legacy of all these groups has been carried forward and reached us. The
current combined expression of virtual and physical networks is in the
so-called Internet of Things (IoT) where a network of devices physically
located in the city are connected to the internet to report and monitor
real time a specific urban or architectural aspect (Mehmood et al.,
2017; Talari et al., 2017).
What all these expressions of combined physical and virtual net-
works have in common is the fact that the physical network is sub-
sidiary to the virtual one. This is also becoming evident in futuristic
expressions of the IoT, in the so-called Internet of Spaces (IoS) and the
Internet of Places (IoP), both using sub-orbital-based high-data rate
communication networks to organise and drive spaces and places
(Brovelli et al., 2015; Lee, 2015). In other words, virtual networks have
-and seems will continue having- control over the physical ones, letting
the later at their mercy. Author's working hypothesis and for which this
research is trying to find answers is that
The control that virtual networks have over physical ones is what
allows for today's monopolised and centralised delivery of codes
As mentioned earlier, this centralised delivery of codes is
Hammurabi's legacy and the increasing use of on-line tools to deliver
codes (the so-called e-governance) strengthens this since the internet is
getting more centralised and -most concerningly- monopolised. As
pointed out by Ibáñez et al. (2017) a few internet companies dominate
the web space thanks to their de facto monopolistic position which does
not promote equal use of the internet, being the cause of the Tragedy of
Commons. Since these issues have been identified, many voices have
been raised advocating for decentralisation and universality back to the
web (Ibáñez et al., 2017).
This decentralised and universal internet is the blockchain, a dis-
ruptive form of transparent peer-to-peer transactions that provides
equal access and use to everyone. As assumptions accompanying the
hypothesis, the author sustains that
The blockchain is the right network to succeed in the delivery of
codes since it is universal and decentralised, allowing for a bottom-
up delivery of codes owned and implemented by the citizen and not
by a central authority.
Moreover, as shown in the following section, it is blockchain's de-
centralised and disruptive approach what will eradicate the sub-
ordination of physical networks to virtual ones thanks to its inherent
coopetition networking environment. Next, section three tackles our
sustainability challenges and unveils how blockchain's coopetitive en-
vironment, plus its immutable accountability capabilities will naturally
empower and incentivise citizens to deliver codes as physical actions.
Lastly, section four presents the example that uses the New Urban
Agenda as a use case to prove sections' three arguments: it will be this a
bottom-up implementation of economic, environmental and social
codes and people's codes ownership what will make us succeed in
tackling our essential global challenges.
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 128 (2018) 226–234
2. Is blockchain the new network for our future living?
Internet is causing a massive digital transformation but with an
undesirable centralisation effect caused by the monopolism of a few
who become de facto central authorities because of their leadership in
these digitalisation processes which, moreover, are delivered under a
non-participatory manner and have questionable privacy formats. As a
result of this, e-government efforts in promoting consultative and
anonymous code-drafting exercises can be hurt or even undermined.
We have to go back to the technologies preceding the internet to
find genuine examples of network universality and decentralisation.
Actually, it will be the more ‘primitive’ human-machine communication
principles of these older technologies what allows for a coopetitive
space. In this section, after recalling on the original linkages between
coopetition and decentralised network universality, we will suggest an
answer to the working hypothesis that leverages on the blockchain to
recover these linkages as the means to end with the dominance of
virtual networks over the physical ones. Next, we will show that the
assumption accompanying the hypothesis was correct since block-
chain's virtual and physical networking symbiosis will allow the citizen
to become an active code-maker instead of the code-receivers we are
nowadays.
Current urban networks, the so-called Smart Cities run on the
Internet of Things (IoT). IoT has its origins in Mark Weiser's (1991)
modern Ubiquitous Computing, whose works build on Robert Pask's
(1968) early Ubiquitous Computing who, in turn, essentially evolved
Norbert Wiener's late Cybernetics theories (Wiener, 1948) by including
what he called “the feedback principle” seeking a more conversational
Cybernetics. Norbert Wiener is considered the father of Cybernetics
since he elaborated the first cyber theories on how communication is
established between the animal (Human) and the Machine (Wiener,
1948). In today's terminology, this is what we could call H2M (Human
to Machine) communication.
In his main dissertation, Cybernetics or Control and Communication in
the Animal and the Machine (1948), Wiener, besides pioneering a set of
Human to Machine principles of interactive communication, he also
uses for the first time the term “cybernetics” to qualify this interactive
communication as a self-regulating mechanism, arguing that the ma-
chine adjusts its response to the feedback provided by the human and
the human replies naturally to the oscillation of the machine. When this
bidirectional communication occurs in a network, all H2M pairs are
acknowledged equally since what is ruling the system is this auto-
controlled back and forth interaction. It is exactly this equality between
H2M pairs in the network what got lost in the evolution towards the
internet.
As mentioned earlier, blockchain brings back not only decen-
tralisation but universality, which means that all the nodes in the net-
work are acknowledged equally and, consequently, the communication
that nodes' peers (Humans) will establish with their computers
(Machines) will be evenly considered by the network, without dis-
criminations or privileges. Therefore, it can be asserted that a block-
chain network is a cybernetic system in true Weiner's terms, whereas
today's internet isn't because of its bias towards centralisation which
results in different weight of nodes and, consequently, of their inputs in
the network. Blockchain networks and any other Weiner-based peer-to-
peer network are the environments where the so-called coopetition
flourishes.
Coopetition is a largely studied subject and, as the same term de-
scribes, stands for “cooperative competition”. Basic principles of coo-
petitive structures were first described in game theory, mainly by Von
Neumann and Morgenstern in Theory of Games and Economic Behavior in
1944. In a Weiner-like humans and machines environment, coopetition
is physical and will occur when the pair Human-Machine interacts with
other pairs in the network with a partial confluence of interests. They
will cooperate with each other to reach a higher value creation if
compared to the value they would create without physical interaction.
M.-L. Marsal-Llacuna
A well-known example of early physical coopetition is Pask's Collo-
quium of Mobiles (1968).
We referred to Robert Pask earlier in this section, as the early pre-
cursor of Ubiquitous Computing which evolved Wiener's late
Cybernetics theories. Pask's Cybernetic Serendipity model proposes a
conversational system between humans and machines (Reichardt,
1968), the so-called Colloquium of Mobiles. In this system, a network of
pendulum mobiles and elastic structures reacts to different human ac-
tions thus being Weiner's responsive machines. Coopetition occurs
naturally as a result of the self-orchestration of the network of mobiles
to achieve higher harmonisation of their collective movement. In any
network here will always be one mobile triggering the leading motion.
Cooperation harmonises whereas competition orchestrates the network.
The first coopetitive principles in virtual networks are found in
May's Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988) and in Huges's Cypherpunk
Manifesto (1993). It is worth quoting a couple of paragraphs of the
later1 that clearly show both competition and cooperation principles.
Since both manifestos are virtual networks' coopetition theoretical
grounds, blockchain is the prominent example. There have been other
coopetitive virtual networks before blockchains, as mentioned in the
1988 Manifesto, but these were mainly CryptoNets focusing only on a
decentralised reimagining of property rights and intellectual property.2
Current blockchain use cases are multi-sectoral, ranging from financial,
identity, funding, etc. applications to the former property and in-
tellectual property rights.
But blockchains are not only coopetitive virtual networks. Besides
being an effective competitive and cooperative vehicle, they have the
ability to serve as executive arm of the community of humans behind
them thanks to their smart contracts functionality. Smart contracts,
although not present in all blockchains, are to execute actions in the
present or in the future and, since they live on the blockchain, will leave
an immutable record of this activity for the posterity. It is this smart
contract functionality and their potential tangible legacy what makes of
blockchains a physical network too, proving that our assumption
‘blockchain being the right network to succeed in the delivery of codes’ is
correct:
Blockchains' virtual and physical networking symbiosis through
smart contracts empowers citizens for a bottom-up delivery of
codes, owned and implemented by them and not by a central au-
thority.
This Blockchain4Cities research uses the blockchain technology to
create a coopetitive physical-virtual networking environment in which
humans will execute physical actions contained in smart contracts and
register in the blockchain their accountability and performance in im-
plementing these. In other words, Blockchain4Cities is a M2H system
1
“Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend
privacy, and since we can't get privacy unless we all do, we're going to write it. We
publish our code so that our fellow Cypherpunks may practice and play with it. Our code
is free for all to use, worldwide. We don't much care if you don't approve of the software
we write. We know that software can't be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system
can't be shut down.
(…)
For privacy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract. People must come and
together deploy these systems for the common good. Privacy only extends so far as the
cooperation of one's fellows in society. We the Cypherpunks seek your questions and your
concerns and hope we may engage you so that we do not deceive ourselves. We will not,
however, be moved out of our course because some may disagree with our goals.”
2 Regulations and Standards) to generate what we call People's Actions, a
Just as the technology of printing altered and reduced the power of medieval guilds
and the social power structure, so too will cryptologic methods fundamentally alter the
nature of corporations and of government interference in economic transactions.
Combined with emerging information markets, crypto anarchy will create a liquid market
for any and all material which can be put into words and pictures. And just as a seemingly
minor invention like barbed wire made possible the fencing-off of vast ranches and farms,
thus altering forever the concepts of land and property rights in the frontier West, so too
will the seemingly minor discovery out of an arcane branch of mathematics come to be
the wire clippers which dismantle the barbed wire around intellectual property.
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 128 (2018) 226–234
that allows for the delivery and implementation of urban codes through
man-made actions the performance and accountability of which will be
machine-recorded. This unprecedented and pioneering physical-virtual
execution of codes answers this research hypothesis on whether the
control that virtual networks have over physical ones is what causes today's
monopolised and centralised delivery of codes, thus:
Coopetition, decentralisation and universality eliminate nodes
dominance in networks, even allowing for the coexistence of mul-
tiple networks and harmonic orchestration in a seamless multi-net-
work delivery of codes
Lastly, and linking with the following section, this blockchain vir-
tual and physical networking symbiosis is what enables a bottom-up
delivery of codes, offering a novel model of governance that is citizen-
centric per se. In the next section we will present how this governance
model would work in the urban context.
3. Are blockchains peoples' layer our governance systems never
had?
Some authors define blockchain as the Internet of value (Tapscott
and Tapscott, 2017), or the rewards layer that the Internet never had
(Swan, 2016). Other authors argue that blockchains can re-decentralise
the Internet (Ibáñez et al., 2017). Putting more attention into the social
aspect of the technology, we believe that blockchains can be the peo-
ple's layer that governance systems never had. Within the Smart City
movement there have been attempts to build participatory and citizen-
centric solutions but since these rely on centralised IoT solutions, actual
results have been very limited. Instead, blockchains allow rethinking
complex systems such as the liveable domain in a more distributed and
therefore participatory manner (Swan, 2015).
Some authors intend to use blockchain with IoT solutions, not for
the shake of social robustness but to gain security in IoT networks, as in
Huckle et al. (2016), when designing a shared economy application, or
in Sharma et al. (2017), when designing a smart mobility network. In
real life, these blockchain-based models cannot work since in an IoT
environment there are multiple connected devices sending data seam-
lessly. A blockchain-based IoT solution would require massive com-
puter power as well as additional costs to pay for data transactions (a
true blockchain is public and transactions are tokenised which means
mining fees apply). Moreover, as a general rule, the price of transac-
tions increases with speed and IoT requires real-time transmission what
will make it even more expensive. Therefore, blockchain-based IoT
models are unfeasible. More appropriate combinations of IoT and
blockchain are using blockchain technology to ensure that IoT devices
have the latest available software installed as well as a measure against
tamper (Lee and Lee, 2017).
Made this point clear, we do not intend to use blockchains in
combination with existing data-processing technologies, nor having
blockchain solutions added as a firmware on top of these. Instead, the
Blockchain4Cities research uses blockchain as a connecting mechanism
to create the ‘people's layer’ that current urban technologies never had.
In this research, blockchain technology is used to connect data pro-
cessing technologies commonly used in the urban context such as the
BIM (Building Information Modelling), GIS (Geographical Information
Systems), IoT (Internet of Things), Mayor's Dashboards, Statistical
Projections, Econometric Models, Cadastre, etc., with urban codes tra-
ditionally delivered and implemented top-down (Policies, Planning,
novel bottom-up execution of urban codes.
In the following section, we will see in detail how these blockchain
connections between existing urban technologies and urban codes are
done by using the New Urban Agenda as a use case to illustrate this.
Let's first understand the reimagining of urban codes having blockchain
as novel executive arm and how these codes will be delivered and
implemented through People's Actions. It therefore follows a
M.-L. Marsal-Llacuna
description of how blockchain technology is used to reimagine current
governance practices in the traditional delivery of urban codes to have
them designed and implemented bottom-up to better serve citizens'
needs:
3.1. Blockchain-made urban policies codes
It will consist of the reengineering of current urban policy-drafting
exercises to have them designed, delivered and implemented bottom-
up, where citizens will have the active role of policy-prosumers instead
of the passive policy-consumers figure they are nowadays. Citizens will
submit their urban needs into the blockchain. A consensus mechanism
will be designed to prioritise highly demanded needs and elevate them
to authorities drafting the actual official policies. Blockchain's valida-
tion capabilities will be used to empower citizens and give them a ra-
tifying role in the final policy draft. This will result in policies re-
sponding to citizens' real needs instead of a political agenda.
3.2. Blockchain-enabled urban planning codes
Master planning instructions will be designed by citizens. Master
planning is often a continuation of previous policy exercises (Marsal
and Segal, 2016a). By using blockchain for the design, delivery and
implementation of masterplans, citizens will be consensually deciding
on the physical transformation of policies previously agreed. This will
be done through submission subsequent voting of these allocation
proposals, zooning characteristics, etc. This will result in masterplans
with a fairer distribution of physical interventions, better responding to
the previously identified real needs of citizens instead of today's more
opportunistic zoning driven by private investment.
3.3. Blockchain-articulated urban regulation codes
There are policies that cannot be transformed into physical inter-
ventions and therefore can't be allocated in masterplans (Marsal and
Segal, 2016b). Blockchain-articulated regulations will tackle the in-
tangible policies not forming part of the planning code and these will be
designed, delivered and implemented using the same bottom-up con-
sensus principles as in policies and planning codes. Citizens will be
prioritising and giving weights to regulatory agendas and programmes
covering their intangible urban needs and enacting them through
blockchain-based People's Actions.
3.4. Blockchain-facilitated urban standards codes
Once some state of the art on the previous blockchained policies,
planning and regulations has been created, standards will come into
play to help systematise the elements required in these codes so that a
standardised sequential model can be created for replicability and
scalability purposes (Marsal and Wood-Hill, 2017), also to monitor and
control codes once implemented. Blockchain-made standards be de-
veloped using the same consensus bottom-up approach and therefore
pioneering mechanisms for citizens' involvement in the design of
standards will be sought (Marsal and Riera, 2017).
As envisioned by various analysts, blockchain is a technology that
will go beyond the transformation of business models and financial
activities; it has the potential of enabling a sustainable global urban
development (Quoc, 2016). Whereas the commercial westernised world
is concentrating on outstanding technology challenges, in developing
countries there is a focus on the trust element of blockchain and how it
can substitute the lack of good governance. It is therefore no surprise
that main blockchain applications in these countries include land re-
gistration, digital identity, and finance for small and medium-sized
enterprises. Land registration and awareness of its relevance to issues
such as food security, climate change, urbanization, and indigenous
people's rights has increased over recent years. The Independent
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 128 (2018) 226–234
Evaluation Group of the World Bank says 70% of the world's population
still lacks access to proper land titling or demarcation (Underwood,
2017), hence the great interest and hopes placed in the blockchain
technology.
On a similar note, other authors and the same UNEP (2016) ac-
knowledge that blockchain applications in the urban domain currently
being tested in the West can be exported and therefore have a global
positive impact. These urban use cases include the establishment of
alternative currencies backed by renewable energy generation
(Mihaylov et al., 2016); electricity trading (Murkin et al., 2016); carbon
mitigation and sustainable innovation (Rutkin, 2017); supply chain
traceability to improve transparency and undermine corruption, parti-
cularly in agriculture and fishing; tracking of illegal wildlife trade,
among others (Sutherland et al., 2017). Westernised use cases on urban
governance issues include the codification of laws into enforceable
smart contracts (Frantz and Nowostawski, 2016); Distributed Govern-
ance Infrastructures to govern DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Or-
ganisations), (Norta, 2016); and Protocols for Smart Communities
(Kianmajd et al., 2016).
However, there are critique voices on the hidden dangers of
blockchain for governance purposes. Garrod (2016) warns us on the
risks of moving towards a DAS (Decentralised Autonomous Society)
stating that “the vision of freedom that underpins blockchain tech is one
that neglects the power that capital holds over us. In neglecting this
power, I claim that this technology might be far more dystopian than
we comprehend, making possible societies that are commodities all the
way down”. On a similar note, Vlad Zamfir, Ehtereum's core team (Peck
and Zamfir, 2017) says “as a policy tool, the blockchain provides
something that is very reliable, and will execute exactly the way you
specified it. But it is also potentially autonomous, which means that it
can survive your government. And it also means that your people might
be stuck with it. Every week now, you hear some big-shot regulator say
how blockchains might be the future of technology that they use. And it
is kind of frightening”.
And it continues by saying “The reason why traditional governance
hasn't worked out that well is that people end up gaming the systems for
their own advantage. I think that basically there is a crazy amount of
corruption and failure over existing legal and regulatory frameworks.
And, given the nature of the global problems that we are facing, we
need some framework that we can use on a global basis to coordinate.
The reason why blockchain might be different is because it is a tool …
that we explicitly can't control. It is a tool that we put outside of our
jurisdiction in order to have it govern us. That is a hard-core thing we
have never done before. Society has never created something that is not
human in order to govern society”.
The Blockchain4Cities research is aware of blockchain's global po-
tentials but also conscious of its dangers. We therefore developed a
universal blockchain framework for urban governance that can be used
globally and that is Ethereum-based, what means it cannot be tampered
or used badly since an attach would be too expensive.3 Moreover, to
minimise smart contract fees there will be a preparatory process to be
conducted off-blockchain where final transactions to be included in
smart contract will be selected. This preparatory process will occur in
an app to which People's Actions will be submitted and voted, and only
selected ones to be implemented will be registered on the Ethereum
blockchain via smart contract. This off/on-blockchain combination is
an innovation that we will call Group2Group (G2G) system of peers, in
which People's Actions are collectively submitted, voted and im-
plemented. This means that
3
Ethereum is the second largest blockchain per market capitalization, and the only
blockchain allowing smart contracts. A 51% attach to the Ethereum network would cost
$617,350,000 per day. The total daily cost of the 51% attack to the Bitcoin network, first
in market capitalization, starts at ~$1,006,247,000. (https://freedomnode.com/blog/86/
cost-of-51-attack-and-security-of-bitcoin-monero-litecoin-and-other-cryptocurrencies)
M.-L. Marsal-Llacuna
Blockchain4Cities' virtual and physical networking symbiosis is a
novel model of citizen-centric bottom-up governance allowing for
unaltered delivery of codes through collectively agreed actions.
Besides minimising smart contract costs, the G2G app will have
another advantage which is to lower the possibilities for lobbying in
having more transactions/smart contracts written in the Ethereum
blockchain. All major blockchains –mainly Bitcoin and Ethereum- are
currently facing the problem of big mining pools concentrated in cer-
tain geographical areas accumulating lots of mining power. These
concentrations have a negative impact on the impartiality of the net-
work and entangle the danger of potentially allowing for lobbing to
have certain transactions prioritised. The G2G app eliminates this
pressure problem because the discussion on which transactions have to
be written in smart contracts occurs off-blockchain.
As for covering costs of the writing of wining transactions, these will
be covered by the administration putting forward the Blockchain4Cities
implementation. Although costs will be quite insignificant for small
implementations, these can substantially increase in big cities or in big
deployments (like in the use case proposed here, the New Urban
Agenda). However, provisions have been made by the
Blockchain4Cities method on how to cover these costs, which basically
consist of first alienating and then redeeming in cryptocurrency ‘ex-
traordinary income’ typically received by administrations, such as
auction benefits from expropriated assets, inheritances, donations, or
outstanding amounts from raffles and draws, among others.
In the next section, we will present a Blockchain4Cities im-
plementation -what we will call the Future Living Framework- that uses
the New Urban Agenda as a use case. In this uses case all the opera-
tional aspects explained in this section will be deployed and therefore
innovations such as the G2G app as well as a novel mechanism to re-
ward People's Action will be put in practice. In essence, the Future
Living Framework delivers a universally engineered toolkit to cater
bottom-up urban governance in both, the more and less sophisticated
global realities, through blockchain-committed collective actions, the
so called People's Actions.
4. The future living framework, a Blockchain4Cities
implementation of the New Urban Agenda
We are conducting the Blockchain4Cities research to explore the
potential of blockchain as a technology to universally deliver urban
governance in a more decentralised, bottom-up and citizen-centric
manner. To start narrowing the scope of this research, we will first
acknowledge the raise of municipalism in detriment of national gov-
ernance forces and the growing influence of cities in shaping our so-
cieties' future while nation-state powers diminish. Therefore, in this
research, we will mostly focus on governance practices and codes
within the municipal remit.
But today's urban challenges such as climate change, sustainable
development, crime, poverty, disease, exhaustion of natural resources,
etc., do not respect borders between countries, nor limits between the
built and the non-built domains, or sizes of cities and towns. Therefore,
to properly refer to the scope of today's challenges we should avoid
using the terms cities or urban since the terminology has to be more
inclusive and embrace the whole liveable domain. Moreover, it should
also consider the global dimension of challenges. Hence, we will refer to
our use case as the Future Living Framework.
And why future instead of more fancy expressions like smart or in-
telligent? Because these -especially smart- are used in connection with
the IoT and subsequent data processing, which failed in incorporating
the citizen, as we saw before in this paper. To avoid these correlations,
we will use the word future. We also believe ‘future’ inspires a more
people-centred sense and has more open connotations, allowing for the
inclusion of everything and everyone taking part of whatever comes
after the present. Hence the use of future in this customised and newly
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 128 (2018) 226–234
coined expression Future Living to refer to one particular use case of the
Blockchain4Cities research.
The Future Living is tested as a Framework with UN's New Urban
Agenda (NUA) as a pilot code since it is a non-country-specific inter-
national governance instrument that is best implemented at municipal
and community level. In this section, the key principles in which the
Blockchain4Cities research is built will be put into practice to prove
both the hypothesis and assumptions already presented. The Future
Living Framework is therefore a model built on the following principles:
- Coopetitive virtual and physical symbiosis facilitated by smart
contracts.
- Universal and decentralised network, allowing for a bottom-up de-
livery of codes owned and implemented by citizens and not by a
central authority.
- Collective implementation of codes through Peoples' Actions under a
Group2Group governance system of peers.
These three principles will be exemplified with NUA's Future Living
Framework and special attention will be paid to describing the last
feature, which is an innovation to current blockchain deployments.
Moreover, NUA's example will also allow us to prove that the im-
plementation of economic, environmental and social codes owned by
citizens is what will make us succeed in tackling our universal global
challenges. It comes first a brief explanation of the New Urban Agenda
for those readers who are not familiarised with this very important
instrument of global urban diplomacy.
The UN-Habitat III New Urban Agenda (NUA) builds on the legacy
of previous Habitat conferences (Habitat I, 1976 in Vancouver; Habitat
II, 1996 in Istanbul) and on the Urban Forums that took place every two
years between the Habitat II and Habitat III conferences, especially the
last Forum in 2014 in Medellin. After Medellin's Urban Forum, a first
preparatory conference took place in New York in September 2014, the
PrepCom1. In April 2015 PrepCom2 took place in Nairobi and with it
the works on the Zero Draft document for the New Urban Agenda of-
ficially started. In July 2016 PrepCom3 took place in Surabaya and the
latest version of the Zero Draft document was approved. Finally, in
October 2016 the Habitat III conference was held in Quito and the New
Urban Agenda was formally launched along with the Quito
Implementation Plan (UN-Habitat III, September 2016).
The Quito Implementation Plan refers to the specific
“Commitments” submitted by various partners intended to contribute
and to reinforce the implementation of the outcomes of Habitat III
Conference and its New Urban Agenda. These voluntary
“Commitments” seek to be concrete actions, measurable and achiev-
able, focused on implementation, and with great depth of information
for future accountability and transparency. The term “Commitment”
implies emphasis to the implementation and outcomes of one or multi-
stakeholders' initiatives promoting sustainable urban development ra-
ther than a common activity of the partners.
The Commitments under the Quito Implementation Plan should be
specific, replicable, action-oriented, funded and innovative. Moreover,
they must be monitored and subject to reporting on a regular basis,
should demonstrate the capacity to deliver, and be led by partners able
to showcase implementation of existing Commitments. The Quito
Implementation Plan is operated through an on-line platform to
monitor the implementation of submitted Commitments. As part of this
accountability mechanism, this platform is open to all for voluntarily
submitting and/or joining Commitments (UN-Habitat III, October
2016).
The NUA is presented in 175 Statements, with recommendations on
urban sustainability (UN-Habitat III, December 2016). For the con-
struction of the Framework, Statements will be broken down and
classified in Themes in correspondence with Quito's Implementation
Plan (QIP) and its Commitments' Thematic Areas (Quito
Implementation Platform, 2017). Next, NUA's Statements will go
M.-L. Marsal-Llacuna
Fig. 1. NUA's future living framework: classification of NUA statements.
through a second analysis, this time looking at codes to classify them as
recommendations requiring policies, planning, regulations or standards
to be implemented. These two iterations will result in a 2D matrix that
will have NUA and QIP Themes in the Z axis and will turn into a 3D
231
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 128 (2018) 226–234
model with the addition of codes in the X-Y plane which, in turn, will
evolve into a 4D form with the addition of the (territorial) Scope of
Quito's Commitments also in the X-Y plan. Fig. 1 shows this 4D form
and we can observe how the largest number of NUA's Statements are
represented in the municipal scope, confirming the strength of muni-
cipalism in detriment of national powers, as anticipated earlier.
The different Statements will be now further explored to discover
their code-theme-scope relationship with existing urban technologies
typically used for governance purposes (BIM, GIS, Mayor's Dashboard,
etc.). Fig. 1 shows what we intend to do: at the intersections of each
code-theme-scope we will identify the urban technology that would
best support that implementation. For instance, a Statement signalling
the need for new policies (code) to promote social housing (theme) in
deprived neighbourhoods (scope) would be best visualised with BIM
(technology). Or a Statement to further regulate (code) deforestation
(theme) world-wide (scope) will be best monitored with GIS (tech-
nology). Another example would be the recommendation for planning
developments (code) to represent outstanding capacity of infra-
structures (theme) to better optimise municipal existing resources
(scope) before planning for new assets. This recommendation would be
best shown with an econometric model (technology).
Original one paragraph long NUA's Statements have been sum-
marised down to twit size and listed at both sides of the z axis.
Statements that were just general statements and not commitments (a
total of 5) have been omitted. Statements have been distributed in QIP
Themes: Urban Frameworks (blue), Spatial Development (orange),
Urban Ecology and Environment (green), Urban economy (yellow),
Social Cohesion and Equity (red), and Urban Housing and Basic
Services (purple). Next, Statements have been classified by code, de-
pending on how they would be best delivered. Statements best deliv-
ered as Policies are located in the front right quadrant of the figure,
Planning is located in the front left quadrant, Regulations are in the
back-left quadrant and Standards are shown in the back-right corner.
Lastly, Statements were also classified by scope, depending on how they
are best implemented. Bigger sticks correspond to codes that are best
implemented at global scope, medium sticks are best implemented at
national scope and the smallest ones are best at local level.
Until now 70 + Quito Commitments have been submitted by vo-
lunteers and more are being regularly added. These pledges and calls
for action are registered in Quito's Implementation Plan website as
simple posts and no monitoring or follow-up mechanisms are being
provided. Individual citizens can volunteer and sign up in
Commitments to form part of the group by expressing interest but they
cannot contribute with specific actions.
The NUA will last 20 years until is next revised in 2036, this means
that the final number of submitted Commitments can be substantial.
Moreover, current limitations in implementation mechanisms mean
that a lot of energy and effort from citizens gets lost since there is no
empowerment transaction mechanism to turn their pledges into actions.
Therefore, the NUA and its QIP will benefit from a governance system
that allows for accountability of transactions and bottom-up partici-
pation in a transparent and publicly governed fashion. That's the
blockchain.
Next, QIP Commitments have been be classified along with NUA
Statements. Fig. 2 shows this classification.
Although Commitments were originally classified by their propo-
nents in QIP's themes, most of them have been re-classified (about 85%)
after analysing their content since they were originally submitted into
the wrong theme. In the figure, QIP Commitments appear next to the
original NUA Statements they serve. Another aspect that has been re-
worked is the scope and Commitments have been re-classified de-
pending on how they are best implemented. The different arrows point
at the original classification of the Commitment. Finally, like with
Statements, Commitments have been also classified into codes, which
was not part of the original QIP classification structure of
Commitments. We recommend the reader to visit the QIP platform
M.-L. Marsal-Llacuna
Fig. 2. NUA's future living framework: classification of QIP commitments upon NUA's
statements.
website (http://nuaimplementation.org/) to follow the detail of clas-
sification and re-classification work done with Commitments.
The best way to show the usability of NUA's Future Living
232
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 128 (2018) 226–234
Framework is by picking up a specific Statement and working its way
down to a blockchain-based Peoples' Action. Let's focus on a Statement
31 (S31), which seems to cover a hot topic since so far it got the largest
number of Commitments, a total of 3. As shown in Fig. 3, S31 is a
statement on housing (theme), that would be best delivered at muni-
cipal level (scope) and implemented as a policy (code), through BIM
(technology).
In the NUA, Statement 31 is as follows “31. We commit ourselves to
promoting national, subnational and local housing policies that support
the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing for all as a
component of the right to an adequate standard of living, that address
all forms of discrimination and violence and prevent arbitrary forced
evictions and that focus on the needs of the homeless, persons in vul-
nerable situations, low-income groups and persons with disabilities,
while enabling the participation and engagement of communities and
relevant stakeholders in the planning and implementation of these
policies, including supporting the social production of habitat, ac-
cording to national legislation and standards.”
And it has been summarised as: S31. Promote housing policies sup-
porting the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing as a first
step towards an adequate standard of living.
Commitments serving S31 purpose are “Construcción para el fu-
turo”, “Construcción de Vivienda” and “Addressing the Unaddressed”.
Due manuscript's length restrictions, we cannot quote S31’
Commitments (C31) here, therefore the reader is encouraged to visit
QIP website for detail. However, a brief summary is necessary. The first
two C31 are pledges to build more social housing, focusing on the
unsheltered. The last C31 is about creating a mechanism to provide
informal settlements and remote villages with an address. From Fig. 3,
note that only one C31 was correctly classified by the authors whereas
the other two have been reclassified to be in their correct theme.
Using the Future Living Framework, the execution of any of these
C31 will first consist of the submission of these pledges to the NUA's
blockchain G2G app where they will be automatically classified in their
corresponding S31. These proposals will be voted by contributors and a
winning pledge will be selected. The G2G app will issue a smart con-
tract for each C31 winning pledge to which each proposer will have to
abide. Each C31 will have at least one proposer (leading author) and
can have unlimited contributors. The off-blockchain contributors will
participate trough the G2G app and be represented by the author
leading the smart contract, the only on-blockchain participant. The
overall group of contributors will be identified as a Group (G) and
managed through the G2G app. In this example C31 has 3 Groups (G),
one per Commitment submitted, being C31G1, C31G2, C31G3. These
three Groups will establish G2G coopetition. The proposer and block-
chain leader will be the Group representative in front of other Gs. There
will be a natural coopetition between Gs within the same C to gain more
contributors and therefore achieve higher levels of implementation.
Higher levels of implementation will be achieved with more
People's Actions, which will occur through collective executions within
each G. Coopetition will naturally flourish since effective implementa-
tions will be rewarded by the competent authority. For example, C31,
since it occurs at local level, rewards could be in the area of local tax
exemptions or council benefits. Examples of Peoples' Actions for C31
helping to implement S31 could be the creation of housing cooperatives
to offer rooms to refugees, or to offer holidays houses to homeless
during the winter season, etc. Every contributor would submit their
proposed collective Action to their corresponding G through the app
and there would be a vote to decide on which of the proposed Peoples'
Actions would be implemented by the G. The wining proposal for each
G will be included in the smart contract, which will include a deadline
after which the number and quality of People's Actions implementa-
tions in each G will be assessed by the competent authority. Rewards
will be given to all contributors of the winning G.
Still in this example, since C31 has 3 different G competing to get
good contributors and contributions but cooperating in the
M.-L. Marsal-Llacuna
Fig. 3. NUA's future living framework: Zoom at the housing theme.
implementation of C31, this will create an effective collective watchdog
governance system that will self-govern the Framework for the good, in
which no fraudulent actions are possible thanks to this G2G public
surveillance and accountability. Lastly to mention, and more im-
portantly, the incentives given by the competent local authority to the
most successful Peoples' Actions will ensure the delivery and im-
plementation of C31, and ultimately the NUA. We can therefore affirm
that blockchain's inherent system of incentives, decentralised sense of
ownership and distributed responsibilities, can be exported beyond
blockchain technology itself to disrupt non-technological domains such
as the urban sphere. Indeed, blockchain's bottom-up empowering me-
chanism constitutes a powerful alternative to the traditional delivery of
codes to help us succeed beyond the implementation of the use case
presented here, the NUA, that is in us triumphantly tackling our eco-
nomic, environmental and social global challenges.
233
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 128 (2018) 226–234
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Dr. Lluïsa Marsal is a Spanish Architect with two Masters and two Doctorates in the
fields of urban planning and applied ICT (2008, 2013). She is the founder of Intelligent'Er
Re'Development, an international think tank providing expert advice and counsel to
governments and administrations on smart and sustainable cities, including innovation on
standards, urban policies, planning and regulations. Recently she has specialised on
Blockchain applications and she is considered a pioneer in the field of
Blockchain4Cities.She combines her consultancy work with a research fellowship in the
field of Blockchain4Cities at Universtiat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Barcelona. Earlier po-
sitions include innovation and research roles in government and administrations in the
UK and Spain. She spent fifteen years in the academia developing different research and
leadership roles in two different Spanish universities. Her academic achievements include
the creation and direction of world's first official scientific master's program in smart
cities, several competitive and commercial research projects in the domains of smart and
sustainable cities, predoc and postdoc scholarships in Germany (2006) and the USA
(2011), a US patent on urban planning standards technology and the publication as main
author of fifteen papers in top peer-reviewed academic journals of her areas of expertise.
She served as UNHabitat III expert and she currently holds a second mandate as a chair at
UN's U4SSC (United for Smart and Sustainable Cities) initiative, this time to explore
Blockchain applications for cities.