The smart city and its publics: insights from across six UK cities

Cowley, Robert; Joss, Simon; Dayot, Youri

doi:10.1080/17535069.2017.1293150

Cited by 203 publications

(152 citation statements)

References 41 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

131

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This is a space of political possibility. As long as state‐mediated steering is informed by, and responds to, urban imperatives based on local needs (however defined) rather than purely market requirements, then the type of analysis offered here contributes to a mapping of potential zones of engagement with policy discourse at moments when they can still be influenced (Cowley et al., ; Joss et al., ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Varieties of smart urbanism in the UK: Discursive logics, the state and local urban context

Caprotti

Cowley

2019

Trans Inst British Geog

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The paper analyses the varieties of smart urbanism to be found in the contemporary urban landscape in the UK. In so doing, it builds on and extends two currently dominant sets of critiques of the smart city: those that call into question its technocratic and top-down modes of governance, and those that describe the smart city as an empty signifier. The paper makes sense of the UK's variegated local smart urban practices by tracing the emergence of a national, state-led cultural economy of smart urbanism. Based on an analysis of smart-city programmes in 34 UK cities, we identify two broad discursive logics through which varieties of smart urbanism are produced and performed. First, the invocation of crisis forms a discursive foundation on which place-specific logics are based. Second, sets of what we term variegated logics are differently combined to build on the "foundational story" of crisis in the construction of local smart agendas. We discuss three of these variegated logics: the city portrayed as technological simulacrum; the focus on specific sectoral activities; and a chameleonic tendency to envelop previous eco-urban agendas into smart urbanism. By making these logics visible, the paper opens up a new critical space for debate about alternative future pathways that smart cities might take. K E Y W O R D S cultural economy, digital economy, resilience, smart city, urban development, urban futures | INTRODUCTIONIt is increasingly popular to think about the urban future through the lens of smart city policies and imaginaries. However, the smart city has also been criticised as a temporary rhetorical device (de Jong et al., 2015) or an empty signifier (Davidson, 2010). The question arises of how to theorise and analyse the processes through which a nebulous concept such as smart urbanism can lead to tangible urban materialities. We understand smart urban discourses as constitutive of emergent urban materialities: as Kong & Woods; highlight, smart urbanism is, "in its abstract form, … a discursive construct that will morph over time and space; in its applied form, it is an urban response to the digital era" (2018, p. 698). We acknowledge both of these (discursive and practical) aspects by tracing the emergence of a cultural economy of smart urbanism in the UK, identifying some ways in which it is discursively performed at a local level in response to state-led steering. Making the discursive logics of this cultural economy visible opens up space for debate over the nature and purposes of smart urbanism-inflected visions of the urban future. Specifically, it highlights the key role of three intertwined factors: the use of ---

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Varieties of smart urbanism in the UK: Discursive logics, the state and local urban context

Caprotti

Cowley

2019

Trans Inst British Geog

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Secondly, smart city strategies so far underexplored the strategic approach commonly adopted in urban planning to orient the city growth and development by using spatial arrangements as proxies for social and economic interventions on local resources [19]. Lastly, the implementation of smart city initiatives is still grounded on the disconnection between the deployment of new technologies in the city and the nature of local needs [20]. On the contrary, urban planning in the last century supported the modernisation of society and cities precisely by grounding its practices in the knowledge of the context and local needs as the driver for generating social and economic development [21].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

City Data Plan: The Conceptualisation of a Policy Instrument for Data Governance in Smart Cities

Lupi

2019

Urban Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presents the conceptualisation of the City Data Plan, a data governance policy instrument intended to connect the production and use of urban data in a comprehensive and evolutive long-term strategy aligned with city development goals. The concept of the City Data Plan had been elaborated by taking into account current issues related to privacy and manipulation of data in smart city. The methodological approach adopted to define the nature of a City Data Plan is grounded on the conceptual and empirical parallelism with corporate data governance plans and general urban plans, respectively aimed to regulate decision-making powers and actions on data in enterprise contexts, and the interests of local stakeholders in the access and use of urban resources. The result of this analytic process is the formulation of the outline of a City Data Plan as a data governance policy instrument to support the iterative negotiation between the instances of data producers and data users for instantiating shared smart city visions. The conceptualisation of the City Data Plan includes a description of the multi-stakeholder organisational structures for the city data governance, cooperation protocols and decision areas, responsibilities assignments, components of the plan and its implementation mechanisms.

show abstract

“…Finally, Glasgow [85] has been portrayed as a city trying to reinvent itself through competition and awards, including Glasgow European Capital of Culture 1990, Glasgow City of Science, Glasgow City of Music, and, the smart-city-related Future City Glasgow, awarded by the Technology Strategy Board, now Innovate UK, since 2013. Despite long-standing social problems, the high level of commitment to transforming the city points to an inclusive, highly networked city with a commitment to partnership.…”

Section: Design: Comparative Study and Qualitative Fieldwork Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Techno-Politics of Data and Smart Devolution in City-Regions: Comparing Glasgow, Bristol, Barcelona, and Bilbao

Calzada

2017

Systems

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper explores the substantial effect that the critical understanding and techno-political consideration of data are having in some smart city strategies. Particularly, the paper presents some results of a comparative study of four cases of smart city transitions: Glasgow, Bristol, Barcelona, and Bilbao. Likewise, considering how relevant the city-regional path-dependency is in each territorial context, the paper will elucidate the notion of smart devolution as a key governance component that is enabling some cities to formulate their own smart city-regional governance policies and implement them by considering the role of the smart citizens as decision makers rather than mere data providers. The paper concludes by identifying an implicit smart city-regional governance strategy for each case based on the techno-politics of data and smart devolution.

show abstract

The smart city and its publics: insights from across six UK cities

Cited by 203 publications

References 41 publications

Varieties of smart urbanism in the UK: Discursive logics, the state and local urban context

Varieties of smart urbanism in the UK: Discursive logics, the state and local urban context

City Data Plan: The Conceptualisation of a Policy Instrument for Data Governance in Smart Cities

The Techno-Politics of Data and Smart Devolution in City-Regions: Comparing Glasgow, Bristol, Barcelona, and Bilbao

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About