Smart cities: Between worlding and provincialising

Burns, Ryan; Fast, Victoria; Levenda, Anthony; Miller, Byron

doi:10.1177/0042098020975982

Cited by 38 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 66 publications

(73 reference statements)

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“…Finally, smart city development is situated in nature and highly context-dependent. While the smart city policy agenda is global, the smart city experience needs to be provincialized (Burns, Fast, Levenda, & Miller, 2021) America have been relatively slow to embrace the smart city narrative. The academic literature documents a variety of approaches, from elite-driven top-down to mixed bottom-up initiatives (Irazábal & Jirón, 2021;Jirón et al, 2021).…”

Section: )mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Citizen Participation in Smart City Development in Mexico City: An institutional logics approach

Pansera

Marsh

Owen

et al. 2022

Organization Studies

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We explore smart city development, with a focus on the modalities of citizen participation, using an institutional logics approach. Taking Mexico City as our case study we describe the presence and dynamics of several logics influencing smart city development. At an organisational level we identify the bureaucratic and technocratic logics underpinning the practices of the governmental agency leading smart city development. Characterised by centralisation and the pursuit of efficiency, and framed by a discourse of austerity and financial control, these logics promote a modality of citizen participation that is limited and unidirectional in nature, with citizens positioned largely as users. At a supra-organisational level, we identify a logic of active citizen participation in urban governance that is formalised in city laws. However, this logic is itself entangled in a logic of clientelism and patronage, manifested through networks of power. These logics work synergistically to limit broader, inclusive citizen participation in, and realisation of benefits from, smart city agendas. We conclude that a richer understanding of institutional logics enhances the analysis of the social construction of the smart city in particular, situated contexts.

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Section: )mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Citizen Participation in Smart City Development in Mexico City: An institutional logics approach

Pansera

Marsh

Owen

et al. 2022

Organization Studies

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“…With the help of the introductory speech and video of other smart cities, the 'participatory' meeting was framed by the concerns and goals of NKDA officials. Beginning with a readymade audio-visual message can orient citizens' focus away from their local issues and concerns, towards policy aspirations and towards "roles carved out for them in policy narratives" (Hoekstra, 2019: 483), aimed at realising a 'world' city that meets global standards (Burns et al, 2021).…”

Section: A 'Participatory' Smart City Imaginary?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The official's statement indicates that NTK's smart imaginary is not simply driven by local needs and citizens' voices. If 'globality' of a city like New York is centred on digital technology, then clearly there is a tension between that aspiration and an imaginary that is responsive towards the needs and knowledges of the city's residents, particularly the most marginalised among them (Bose, 2014;Burns et al, 2021). Rather than directly addressing citizens' needs of accessible public transport, safe pedestrian and bicycling infrastructure, NTK officials translated citizens' voices into the promotion of digital technologies following 'global' smart imaginaries (Wiig and Wyly, 2016: 488).…”

Section: A 'Participatory' Smart City Imaginary?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Smart as (un)democratic? The making of a smart city imaginary in Kolkata, India

Ghosh¹,

Arora²

2021

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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‘Smart’ imaginaries have been enthusiastically embraced by urban planners and policymakers around the world. Indians are no exception. Between 2015–2018, following national government guidelines to use participatory and inclusive processes, many cities developed proposals for a smart city challenge. Successful proposals received financial and technical support from the national government. We examine the making of the smart city proposal submitted by New Town Kolkata (NTK). We ask how (un)democratic was the making of the proposal, along three aspects: distributive, participatory, and responsive. Based on an analysis of documents and interviews with policymakers and citizens, we find that NTK’s smart city imaginary largely failed to be distributive. It rarely accounted for the specific needs of poorer and vulnerable citizens. City officials invested considerable effort in using participatory techniques, but citizen participation was tightly controlled through top-down design and practice of the techniques. The latter often facilitated one-way flow of information from the city administration to the citizens. The proposal was responsive to some citizens’ voices, but only those belonging to the more affluent classes. A messy diversity of citizens’ voices was thus closed down, as the city officials filtered and cherry-picked citizens’ voices that were well-aligned with the official technocratic vision of ‘global’ smart urbanism. The paper shows how democracy can be put in the service of technocracy, within a rhetoric of citizen participation and social inclusion that embodies smart urbanism.

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“…Smart cities today represent an urban management model, where the strategic management of municipalities, together with a wide deployment of technology, seek to improve the well-being of the inhabitants in matters of transportation, environment, quality of infrastructure and urban services in general [2]. In this context, the Internet of Things (IoT) is a key technology, since it provides an opportunity for cities to have more efficient public services while still encompassing the matter of social disparities, improving the quality of life by making cities capable of implementing these technological advances while also minding social concerns [3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Municipal Iot Implementation Strategy for Brasília, Brazil: Smart City Guidelines at the Local Level

Rivera

Matos

Lozano-Igualt³

2021

WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment

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While cities face multiple challenges, population growth must be combined with resource efficiency and sustainability. In this context, many municipalities intend to become smart cities, where good urban management practices are combined with various technologies to generate highly connected and monitored cities, aiming to improve the quality of life of their inhabitants. In Brasília, the capital of Brazil, while several individual initiatives have emerged in this direction, a comprehensive plan for the implementation of a smart city has not yet been consolidated. This research proposes an action plan for making Brasília a smart city, with a focus on enabling Internet of Things (IoT) at the municipal level. The strategy is based on a local diagnosis of socio-economic aspects, technological landscape and regulatory constraints, and brings together a series of recommendations and references of projects that could be implemented in the city to make urban public services more efficient.

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Smart cities: Between worlding and provincialising

Cited by 38 publications

References 66 publications

Exploring Citizen Participation in Smart City Development in Mexico City: An institutional logics approach

Exploring Citizen Participation in Smart City Development in Mexico City: An institutional logics approach

Smart as (un)democratic? The making of a smart city imaginary in Kolkata, India

Municipal Iot Implementation Strategy for Brasília, Brazil: Smart City Guidelines at the Local Level

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