A Smart Right to the City—Grounding Corporate Storytelling and Questioning Smart Urbanism

Anke Strüver,Rivka Saltiel,Nicolas Schlitz,Bernhard Hohmann,Thomas Höflehner,Barbara Grabher

doi:10.3390/su13179590

Abstract

Against the backdrop of multiple ongoing crises in European cities related to socio-spatial injustice, inequality and exclusion, we argue for a smart right to the city. There is an urgent need for a thorough account of the entrepreneurial mode of technocapitalist smart urbanism. While much of both affirmative and critical research on Smart City developments equate or even reduce smartness to digital infrastructures, we put actual smartness—in the sense of social justice and sustainability—at centre stage. This paper builds on a fundamental structural critique of (1) the entrepreneurial city (Harvey) and (2) the capitalist city (Lefebvre). Drawing upon Lefebvre’s right to the city as a normative framework, we use Smart City developments in the city of Graz as an illustration of our argument. Considering strategies of waste and mobility management, we reflect on how they operate as spatial and technical fixes—fixing the limits of capitalism’s growth. By serving specific corporate interests, these technocapitalist strategies yet fail to address the underlying structural causes of pressing urban problems and increasing inequalities. With Lefebvre’s ongoing relevant argument for the importance of use value of urban infrastructures as well as his claim that appropriation and participation are essential, we discuss common rights to the city: His framework allows us to envision sustainable and just—actually smart—alternatives: alternatives to technocapitalist entrepreneurial urbanisation. In this respect, a smart right to the city is oriented towards the everyday needs of all inhabitants.

Highlights

The present urban crises of smartness encompass the financial crisis, the urban housing, mobility and waste crises, the climate and COVID-19 crises, and the crisis of theSmart City
In order to discuss the right to the Smart City, we pick up the contemporary global trend to smart(er) cities and advance the debate on smartness as a typical expression of entrepreneurial urbanisation in general [4,5,6,7] and “smart cities as corporate storytelling” [8]
By using Smart City narratives and their developments in Graz, we illustrate the entrepreneurial mode of smart urbanism

Summary

Introduction

All of these crises relate to conditions of socio-spatial injustice, urban inequality and exclusion and need to be regarded in the light of a right to the city [1,2,3]. Both strands follow Harvey and his critique of neoliberalism [1], uneven spatial development and urban entrepreneurialism—including the privatisation of local urban infrastructures [9]. Going beyond the common equation—or even reduction—of smartness to digital infrastructures and a digital right to the city [13], we put smart strategies at the centre stage and argue that

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