Abstract
This article takes stock of the smart city concept by locating it in relation to both a longer history of urban computing, as well as more recent projects exploring the vexed issues of participatory urbanism, data ethics and urban surveillance. The author argues for the need to decouple thinking regarding the potential of urban digital infrastructure from the narrow and often technocentric discourse of ‘smart cityism'. Such a decoupling will require continued experimentation with both practical models and conceptual frameworks, but will offer the best opportunity for the ongoing digitization of cities to deliver on claims of ‘empowering' urban inhabitants.
Highlights
I’ve been involved with the International Journal of E-Planning Research (IJEPR) since its inception, a fact that immediately says something about the nature of the field this journal has sought to address
The fact that there is a significant overlap between my research— which has broadly concerned the problematic of ‘media and cities’—and the interests of the IJEPR is testament to the profound transformation that has swept across both fields in the last two decades
If the study of cities and of urban life has always been interdisciplinary to a greater or lesser extent, with disciplines such as architecture, planning and design counterpointed by those such as geography and urban sociology, the profound reconfiguration of cities set in train as networked digital technologies are deployed as pervasive urban infrastructure has brought new voices into the conversation
Summary
If the study of cities and of urban life has always been interdisciplinary to a greater or lesser extent, with disciplines such as architecture, planning and design counterpointed by those such as geography and urban sociology, the profound reconfiguration of cities set in train as networked digital technologies are deployed as pervasive urban infrastructure has brought new voices into the conversation. This includes researchers from previous outlier disciplines such as media and communication, as well as new sub-fields such as interaction design. Underpinning this examination is another question: how might we reformulate the smart city agenda for a future in which it can better live up to the expansive aspirations so often claimed under its name? How can we ensure that the digitally instrumented city doesn’t foreclose key elements of the social ambiance and political action that have been crucial to the distinctive culture of modern cities?
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