Strategies of visibility in the smart city

Abstract

Cities across the world are increasingly labelling themselves as smart in one way or another. At the same time, this smartness appears amorphous or invisible in its built urban environment. Critical researchers writing on the smart city regularly express confusion or exasperation about precisely the difficulty to locate the smart in the city. Visibility of the smart city is not a given. This article argues that visibility in the case of the smart city is instead strategically produced, and that the strategy opted for tells us something about the kind of urban imaginary put forward. The article introduces a provisional and non-exhaustive taxonomy of strategies of visibility based on analyses of three different cases of smart city projects (in Brazil, Sweden and Canada) and identifies the ways in which the smart city is made visible (or not)—symbolic presence of smart, modelling smart and ubiquitous invisible smart—and discusses what kind of city is envisioned based on each strategy.

Visual Communication in Shared Mobility Systems as an Opportunity for Recognition and Competitiveness in Smart Cities

“…From the point of view of smart city development, it is particularly important to increase the visibility of the selected smart services [52,53]. Smart city researchers regularly emphasize that the visibility of services is not obvious, and it causes many difficulties with the proper development of not only the websites themselves but also the cities.…”

“…Smart city researchers regularly emphasize that the visibility of services is not obvious, and it causes many difficulties with the proper development of not only the websites themselves but also the cities. Therefore, it is particularly important to inform all service providers about the need to develop appropriate visibility strategies for their own companies and implement them [52,53].…”

Towards a kaleidoscopic definition of mobility

“…In this case, the image of mobility as a brain encourages us to think about mobility systems controlled by centralised decision-making systems from afar. As in the case of the control room of Rio de Janeiro's smart city operations (for a description see, for example, Torisson, 2022), the adopted notion of smartness is at least partially inspired by the image of mobility as a brain. According to the narratives that justify their existence, high-tech smart centres of vigilance and decision-making are supposed to become the central nervous systems of the cities of the future and their mobility systems.…”

Smart cities and sustainable development in Asia Pacific

“…En esa misma línea, esto genera grandes oportunidades en el desarrollo de tecnologías e infraestructuras; además, la data que se genera en una ciudad inteligente mantiene conectadas a las comunidades urbanas y otros grupos de interés como el gobierno, ciudadanos, empresas, entre otros [9]. De esta manera, la ciudad inteligente es un proceso continuo que va más allá de los circuitos y se vuelve perceptible a través de sus procesos de visualización, ejemplo de ello son las interfaces Smart [10].…”