THE DIGITAL CITY AS A SPACE FOR POLITICAL IDENTITY: DIGITAL PROCEDURES AND PRACTICES OF CIVIC INTERACTION
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31392/cult.alm.2026.3.22Keywords:
political philosophy, digital city, political identity, methodology, digital procedures, civic interaction, digital citizenship, participation parity, urban place attachment, digital administrative burdens, procedural justice, digital inclusion, normative assessment of digital procedures, communicationAbstract
The article examines the digital city from the perspective of political philosophy, focusing on how administrative digital procedures and everyday practices shape residents’ political self-understanding. It develops a procedural model explaining the conditions under which interaction with municipal services strengthens or weakens a person’s status as an equal participant in a political community. The research methodology combines conceptual analysis, normative-institutional analysis of the complete user journey, and critical analysis of the institutional and regulatory effects of sociotechnical systems. The theoretical framework draws on studies on identity and urban place attachment, the public sphere, participatory parity and the right to the city, digital citizenship, data justice, digital administrative burdens, and inclusion in electronic public services, as well as normative instruments concerning data protection and access to information. The article distinguishes urban place attachment, urban identity, administrative identification, and political identity. The proposed model comprises five interrelated stages: access to services and institutional recognition; the transformation of a private need into a public claim; obtaining a reasoned response; appeal and review; and participation in revising common rules. The analysis shows that the political significance of a digital procedure lies not in the number of functions it offers or the speed of service delivery, but in the relationship between residents and public authority that it institutionalizes. Three criteria of democratic quality are substantiated: equality of political status, public justification of decisions, and a genuine possibility of contestation and review. The article’s theoretical contribution lies in connecting a political-philosophical account of identity with analysis of the complete digital user journey and in explaining political agency through repeated experiences of recognition, accountability, and effective voice. The model may be used for the normative assessment of municipal digital procedures in the fields of public claims, education, safety, and civic participation.
References
Brubaker R., & Cooper F. (2000). Beyond “identity”. Theory and Society, 29 (1), 1–47. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007068714468.
Cardullo P., & Kitchin R. (2019). Smart urbanism and smart citizenship: The neoliberal logic of “citizen-focused” smart cities in Europe. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 37 (5), 813–830. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263774X18806508.
European Parliament & Council of the European Union. (2016). Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data. Official Journal of the European Union, L 119, 1–88. URL: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/oj.
Fraser N. (1998). Social justice in the age of identity politics: Redistribution, recognition, participation (WZB Discussion Paper No. FS I 98–108). Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung. URL: https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/12624.
Habermas J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society (T. Burger, Trans.). MIT Press.
Halling A., & Bækgaard M. (2024). Administrative burden in citizen–state interactions: A systematic literature review. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 34 (2), 180–195. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muad023.
Hegemann M., & Ritz A. (2026). Administrative burden in digital service provision: A systematic literature review and research agenda. Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, gvag004. https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvag004.
Hernández B., Hidalgo M.C., Salazar-Laplace M.E., & Hess S. (2007). Place attachment and place identity in natives and non-natives. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 27 (4), 310–319. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2007.06.003.
Isin E. F., & Ruppert E. (2020). Being digital citizens (2nd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield International.
Kim Y., & Lee J. (2024). Digitally vulnerable populations’ use of e-government services: Inclusivity and access. Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, 46 (4), 422–446. https://doi.org/10.1080/23276665.2024.2321569.
Lefebvre H. (1996). The right to the city. In E. Kofman & E. Lebas (Eds. & Trans.), Writings on cities (pp. 147–159). Blackwell.
Li X., & Wang J. (2024). Should government chatbots behave like civil servants? The effect of chatbot identity characteristics on citizen experience. Government Information Quarterly, 41 (3), Article 101957. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2024.101957.
Lewicka M. (2011). Place attachment: How far have we come in the last 40 years? Journal of Environmental Psychology, 31 (3), 207–230. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2010.10.001.
Nissenbaum H. (2010). Privacy in context: Technology, policy, and the integrity of social life. Stanford University Press.
Peeters R. (2023). Digital administrative burdens: An agenda for analysing the citizen experience of digital bureaucratic encounters. Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, 6 (1), 7–13. https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvac024.
Raymond C. M., Brown G., & Weber D. (2010). The measurement of place attachment: Personal, community, and environmental connections. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30 (4), 422–434. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2010.08.002.
Scannell L., & Gifford R. (2010). Defining place attachment: A tripartite organizing framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30 (1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2009.09.006.
Taylor L. (2017). What is data justice? The case for connecting digital rights and freedoms globally. Big Data & Society, 4 (2), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951717736335.
United Nations. (2006). Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. URL: https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-persons-disabilities.
Wnuk A., & Oleksy T. (2021). Place attachment and acceptance of smart city technologies. Proceedings of the 54th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 2487–2496). https://doi.org/10.24251/HICSS.2021.305.
Санжаровський І. М. (2026a). Методологія дослідження цифрового міста як простору політичної ідентичності. Актуальні проблеми філософії та соціології, 59, 121–127. https://doi.org/10.32782/apfs.v059.2026.19.
Санжаровський І. М. (2026b). Цифрове місто як простір політичної ідентичності: сучасні філософські підходи. Матеріали ХІІ Всеукраїнської науково-теоретичної конференції з міжнародною участю «Соціальні та гуманітарні технології: філософсько-освітній аспект» (м. Черкаси, 2–3 квітня 2026 р., с. 164–167). Черкаський державний технологічний університет. URL: https://fipn.chdtu.edu.ua/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2026/05/soczialni-ta-gumanitarni-tehnologiyi_materialy-hii-konferencziyi.pdf.
