Making a smart city for the smart grid? The urban material politics of actualising smart electricity networks

Abstract

In a growing debate about the smart city, considerations of the ways in which urban infrastructures and their materialities are being reconfigured and contested remain in the shadows of analyses which have been primarily concerned with the management and flow of digitalisation and big data in pursuit of new logics for economic growth. In this paper, we examine the ways in which the 'smart city' is being put to work for different ends and through different means. We argue that the co-constitution of the urban as a site for carbon governance and a place where smart energy systems are developed is leading to novel forms of governmental intervention operating at the conjunction of the grid and the city. We seek to move beyond examining the rationales and discourses of such interventions to engage with the ways in which they are actualised in and through particular urban conditions in order to draw attention to their material politics. In so doing, we argue that the urban is not a mere backdrop to transitions in electricity provision and use but central to its politics, while electricity is also critical to the ways in which we should understand the politics of urbanism. primarily concerned with the management and flow of digitialisation and big data in pursuit of new logics for economic growth. In this paper, we examine the ways in which the 'smart city' is being put to work for different ends and through different means. Using the case of the Smart Grid Smart City programme in Australia, we argue that the co-constitution of the urban as a site for carbon governance and a place where smart energy systems are developed is leading to novel forms of governmental intervention operating at the conjunction of the grid and the city. We seek to move beyond examining the rationales and discourses of such interventions to engage with the ways in which they are actualised in and through particular urban conditions in order to draw attention to their material politics. In so doing, we argue that the urban is not a mere backdrop to transitions in electricity provision and use, but central to its politics, while electricity is also critical to the ways in which we should understand the politics of urbanism.

Energy efficiency left behind? Policy assemblages in Sweden’s most climate-smart city

“…The material configuration of smart home technology required installation in each apartment, which was more invasive than the smart grid technology that only connected to the central building management system. The smart home policy assemblage suffered from what Bulkeley et al (2016) have called 'the mundane materialities of the everyday [and] the banal workings of day-to-day infrastructural changes' (p. 16). However, smart home technologies remain part of how Eon and Malmö communicate about their experiments, which indicates that smart grids and smart homes are part of the same cognitive frame concerning climate-smart cities.…”

“…They take place in existing cities and must wrestle with the obduracy of urban infrastructure (Bulkeley, McGuirk, & Dowling, 2016). They must also contend with the inertia of existing socio-technical systems, which extend beyond the confines of the experiment and the city (Hodson, Geels, & McMeekin, 2017).…”

Survey of Smart Grid Concepts and Technological Demonstrations Worldwide Emphasizing on the Oman Perspective

“…Also, they can be used to convey better public services with respect to particular needs in particular cityscapes. The co-constitution of Smart City and Smart Grid is gaining traction in India, Sweden and many other places, because it provides ease in carbon-governance, policy implementation alongside creating a smart energy system [80]. The co-constitution is highly important because without thinking of a smart energy system, it would be quite complicated to develop a smart city model.…”

Breakdown in the Smart City: Exploring Workarounds with Urban-sensing Practices and Technologies

“…Key research has been undertaken on the "actually existing smart city" (Shelton, Zook and Wiig 2015) to establish how smart city plans from technology companies are implemented, thereby providing important detail about the way that these plans materialize. Other research takes up the emergent politics involved in negotiating the disjuncture between plans and articulations of smart city projects and the contingencies of urban redevelopment (Bulkeley et al 2016). This literature also foregrounds how smart city plans "repair" urban problems by conforming to a particular version of socio-material order.…”