The Smart Narrative of a Smart City

Abstract

The current narrative about Smart Cities is flawed on two levels. First, it describes cities whose promise of smartness is highly biased. Second, it neglects to account for the systemic nature of the urban metabolism, as well as the role of the support region of the city (in terms of its resource provision). In this contribution, I propose a short review of the mainstream Smart City narrative elements as presented by influential and authoritative sources, pointing out their detachment from the reality and from the sustainability of cities described by systemic thinking.

“Unpacking state-society relations in the urban space: What are the Limit(s) of compromise?”. The dilemma about answering such a question and some recent Venetian experiences

“…Last but not least, a movement seems to also be growing around the current topic of introducing an entrance fee for people not staying at hospitality facilities, thus potentially also affecting residents' friends, with the risk of countering local life and not rather tourism, as claimed instead to justify such a measure (Cristiano & Gonella, 2020). Although not mature enough for adequate commenting, some inhabitants and groups have started to discuss the entrance fee with the apparatus that is being expected to be implemented to control the respect of payments, with major concerns oriented to the so-called 'Smart Control Room' (Venis, 2021), allegedly linking itself to the narrative of the smart city (a crucial critical reading of which is offered in Gonella, 2019), but apparently quite blur in privacy guarantees and hence potentially sounding quite dystopic to some attentive ear.…”

Where's the bathroom in this “mobile home”? Adding Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WaSH) infrastructure to agendas on homelessness and digital media

“…Such solutions are often couched in the value-neutral and rational language of tech-based "tools" (Galič& Schuilenburg, 2020) and the problems elevated to be addressed rarely consider the plights of the unhoused-as Khayyatkhoshnevis et al (2020) discover through a survey of smart city literature, which finds "social problems, such as poverty and homelessness" to be noticeably absent (p. 11380). Gonella (2019) points out that for so many people, both within developing countries and those living as marginalized in the wealthier countries, "talking of 'smart interconnectedness' where there is no access to electricity or internet access, or of sanitary data where there aren't health services, is just bitterly senseless" (p. 2). He goes on to suggest that the richest city residents seem to be the real targets meant to benefit from smart-ness, and notes that in a 250-page report on best practices among smart cities in the European Union, "the words 'mobility' and 'business' appear 114 and 67 times" while words including " 'poverty,' 'violence,' 'disability,' 'inequality,' 'welfare,' and 'homeless' never [emphasis added] appear" (p. 2); Sadoway and Shekhar (2014) situate the craze for smart cities as the most recent in a long line of socio-technological processes that have increased spatial segregation based on wealth, class, or other divisions.…”

Multispecies sustainability

“…The current sustainability concept focuses on a perceived generational conflict, namely between those currently living and those yet to be born, rather than situating this relationship in broader contexts of intrahuman and interspecies relationships. We will focus here on the underexplored latter, although we recognize that the former kind of relationship is far from caring for all human beings, since poverty, inequality, homelessness are left out of many narratives on sustainability (Gonella, 2019). Although the wording in the Brundtland Report does not explicitly limit the needs of the present to human needs, this emerges from the discourse around sustainable development which is often reported as in contrast to the notion of sustainability (Latouche, 2004; Springett, 2013).…”