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• Smart city technologies do not necessarily increase the level of citizen engagement. • The idea of a public is a plural, emergent phenomenon that requires careful consideration by planners to enhance equity and participation. • Critical perspectives should consider the way publics are formed in relation to smart city technologies. In efforts to become "smart cities," local governments are adopting various technologies that promise opportunities for increasing participation by expanding access to public comment and deliberation. Scholars and practitioners encounter the problem, however, of defining publics-demarcating who might participate through technology-enhanced public engagement. We explore two case studies in the city of Calgary that employ technologies to enhance public engagement. We analyzed the cases considering both the definition of publics and the level of citizen participation in areas of participatory budgeting and secondary suites. Our findings suggest that engaging the public is not a straightforward process, and that technology-enhanced public engagement can often reduce participation towards tokenism. City councillors and planners need to critically confront claims that smart cities necessarily enhance participation. Moving beyond tokenism requires understanding "public" as a plural category. Municipal governments should seek to proactively engage citizens and communities utilizing helpful resources including, but not limited to, digital tools and smart technologies. This would allow planners to keep a "finger on the pulse" of publics' concerns, better identifying and addressing issues of equity and social justice. It is also important to consider how marginalized publics can best be recognized in order to bring their concerns to the fore in decision-making processes.

We introduce key concepts that have guided the diverse case studies of this special issue on smart cities. Calling into question Global North conceptions of the smart city, nine different articles analyse smart city projects around the world, with particular attention paid to the need to provincialise our understanding of these projects as well as to consider their relationship to worlding strategies. These case studies demonstrate the diversity of what smart cities can be and the need to consider, through comparative analysis, the broader power geometries in which they are imbedded.

This article investigates how digital technologies in the energy sector are enabling increased value extraction in the cycle of capital accumulation through surveillant proceesses of everyday energy consumption. We offer critical theory (Gramsci, Foucault) and critical political economy (Marx) as a guide for critical understanding of value creation in ICT through quotidian processes and practices of social reproduction. In this regard, the concept of the “prosumer” is extended beyond notions of voluntary participation in Web 2.0 to the political economy of energy use. Within this broad framework we investigate national and local level “smart grid” campaigns and projects. The “smartening” of the energy grid, we find, is both an ideological construct and a technological rationalization for facilitating capital accumulation through data collection, analysis, segmentation of consumers, and variable electricity pricing schemes to standardize social practices within and outside the home. We look at BC Hydro as one illustration of where such practices are being instituted.Cet article examine comment les technologies numériques dans le secteur de l’énergie sont en train de permettre, grâce à la surveillance de la consommation de l’énergie au quotidien, une extraction de valeur dans le cycle d’accumulation du capital. Dans cet article, nous avons recours à la théorie critique (Gramsci, Foucault) et à l’économie politique critique (Marx) pour atteindre une compréhension critique de la création de valeur permise par les technologies de l’information et de la communication dans le cadre de pratiques et processus de reproduction sociale au quotidien. À cet égard, nous élargissons le concept de « prosommateur »  au-delà de notions de participation volontaire au Web 2.0 en y ajoutant celui d’économie politique de l’utilisation de l’énergie. Dans cette optique, nous examinons des campagnes et projets sur les réseaux électriques intelligents aux niveaux national et local. À notre avis, l’idée qu’il faille améliorer le réseau énergétique est à la fois une construction idéologique et une rationalisation technologique pour faciliter l’accumulation de capitaux au moyen de la collection et l’analyse de données, de la segmentation des marchés et de l’imposition de prix variables sur l’électricité afin de standardiser les pratiques sociales à la maison et au-delà. Nous examinons BC Hydro comme exemple d’un endroit où de telles pratiques ont lieu.

While the uneven causes and impacts of climate change are widely known, it is also becoming evident that many elements of the response to the climate crisis are also reinforcing discrimination, segregation, and displacement among marginalized peoples. This is entrenching a system of climate apartheid, one that is evidenced by uneven vulnerabilities to the climate crisis, as well as inequitable implementation of climate-oriented infrastructures, policies, and programs. These efforts often secure privileged populations while harming, excluding, and criminalizing populations whose lives have been made precarious by climate change. Like previous incarnations of state-sponsored “separateness,” climate apartheid is rooted in processes of colonization, racial capitalism, and hetero-patriarchy that render some populations expendable. In this paper, we show how these interlocking historical structures of oppression facilitate a response to climate change that is systematically promoting spatial, socio-economic, and ecological segregation in many mainstream attempts to safeguard economic and socio-political structures amidst global ecological catastrophe. We then offer frameworks and interventions intended to introduce meaningful pathways forward for climate justice that seek to render all life indispensable.