TEL AVIV INVESTIGATION: Innovation as a way of life, a centralized model of data governance, and the easiness to get in touch with decision-makers.

This article presents the results of my Israeli investigation, second case study of my PhD in Urban Science entitled “Stakeholder engagement in Smart-City: Participatory governance in urban complexity”. It has been conducted between January and April 2020 and consisted in identifying the key stakeholders of decision-making in the Smart-City field. Information collected both by internet research and word of mouth, by a survey study widely spread to all sorts of Telavivian inhabitants, and a Social Network Analysis conducted on Twitter. I haven’t been able to organize my own participative workshops or meetups because of the Coronavirus crisis, but I applied to a range of online hackathons instead. Not directly related to my academic research but still a way to test the concrete solutions that can be found out of it.

This Israeli investigation reveals that Tel Aviv evolve on a synergistic dynamic where the population engage collectively in massive transformation, unavoidable to its survival for a century. A system of inner order in which each individual, public servant, leading speaker, promotes at its scale the last objectives that made an unsaid consensus. Together, they all participate in a collective movement where everyone does his job without necessarily knowing the final goal to achieve. Or rather, everyone shares the same goal which is to insure the survival of…