Technology as Ideology in Urban Governance

Abstract

This article argues that the turn toward smart cities, emphasizing solutions, services, and infrastructures driven by digital technologies, has reinforced a dominant ideology shaping urban decision making, frameworks, and outcomes. Two core dimensions of this ideology of technology in urban governance interact to consequentially reshape urban processes: (1) the priority of attracting high-technology industries as engines for urban economies and (2) the tendency to reframe urban problems into technological problems, to be addressed by technological solutions. Together, these mechanisms operate in conjunction to privilege technological needs, capacities, and priorities in urban governance, contributing to the widespread exclusion of people and problems beyond the scope of technology. Although not unprecedented, this ideology of technology has acquired renewed potency with neoliberalized urbanism, urban restructuring, and the ongoing information revolution. Furthermore, these changes intensify the ongoing transformation of cities (and space more generally) into digitized spaces tailored for capital accumulation in the context of digital and surveillance capitalism. To illustrate these dynamics, we briefly describe recent events in San Francisco, one of the key sites in the current techno-economic paradigm. Key Words: digital economy, ideology, smart cities, technology, urban governance.