URBAN CROWDSOURCING: POTENTIAL AND CHALLENGES

The internet and mobile phones enable limitless and continuous worldwide communication. Over the last few years, the ongoing digital revolution has expanded the realm of communication to encompass people, virtual agents, and physical things. Recently, Colin and Verdier designated the interconnected communities of individuals as la multitude [or the multitude], arguing that open collaborative platforms can be seized on to engage individuals in creative activities in order to capture their ideas, proposals, and innovative solutions to generate value. In this paper we discuss the impact of the new technologies on urban liveability, focusing on urban crowdsourcing that is the application of digital crowdsourcing in urban areas. The aim of this paper is to analyse the potential of urban crowdsourcing within the paradigm of smart and connected communities. From our analysis emerges that urban crowdsourcing is a concept that should be investigated per se if we want to catch its potential applications in urban contexts