Smart Cities - Halegoua

Smart Cities

Metadata

---

• Author: Germaine Halegoua

---

Highlights

Proponents of smart city development emphasize the role of technology in “smart growth,” improved public services, efficient infrastructures, and entrepreneurial competitiveness. However, critics voice suspicion about the datafication of urban processes, surveillance of urban populations, and the eagerness of public officials to regard information and communication technologies (ICTs) as “solutions” for perceived urban problems.

The corporate- or technology-driven iterations of the smart city are only a subset of many possible ways that urban informatics can take hold, but they currently remain the dominant model for smart city development.

cities often congratulate themselves on being “smart” but rarely define the criteria by which to evaluate this claim or explain why being “smart” is so important.

The desire to read urban interactions as data supports the idea of smart cities as data-based alert and response systems. Beyond being responsive to environmental and behavioral changes, smart cities are envisioned as predictive.

“big data” analytics are touted as a means to predict trends or future urban activities and conditions. Cities are already “smart” by several measures. Urban environments and populations repeatedly adapt to changing conditions, incorporate emerging technologies, and continually develop policies and social norms for managing complexity at macro and micro scales.

labeling a city as “smart” is a political and ideological choice. The term “smart city” implies a hierarchy in which certain cities are perceived as “smarter” than others and provides a general benchmark or goal for development; to attain this title, products and services can be sold and citizenry mobilized.

the European Commission define smart cities as ones that use ICTs to create more efficient and engaging services for citizens and businesses, while the US Department of Transportation describes smart cities as urban forms that use technologies to aid mobility of people and goods;

companies like IBM position technologies as more important than the outcomes or impacts of using these tools. IBM has specifically targeted cities and urban technologies as potentially lucrative markets, positioning its own products as “obligatory passage points” and the corporation as a necessary partner in smart city planning and development.

smart cities are imagined as sentient or “sensitized cities” that gain a heightened awareness of the world and of themselves through data and technology
In fiction, imagine a city thT is jn fact alive and whose neurons and synapses are the every day interactions olf thkse whok live there. Yet this city is jtself alive, an gargsntuan AI that exists through the data of the peolle who live within.

---

In 2011, before completing Rio’s command-and-control centers, IBM trademarked the term “smarter cities,” further solidifying a technology-biased perspective on the meaning and partnerships for building cities with the prefix “smart.”14 Leonidas Anthopoulos, business professor specializing in information systems, traced the evolution of the term “smart city” from 1990s usage of “digital city” and “virtual city.”15 “Digital cities” tended to describe online communities, widespread municipal Internet access, or

during the 2000s certain types of infrastructure development were seen as more valuable to economic development and urban management than others. Expressways, logistics ports, airports, and telecommunication networks that support economic growth, attract entrepreneurial talent and businesses, and improve the mobility and security needs of “high-end service and manufacturing sectors” were prioritized.17 Smart city critics have argued that Graham and Marvin’s “splintering urbanism” is reinscribed in smart cities as corporate-sponsored visions lead to social polarization and inequity through digital media implementation and data-driven analytics. The selective investment in infrastructure and the types of activities and populations smart city developers recognize as valuable are central questions for subsequent chapters.

Much smart city critique has focused on ideologies shaped by industrial strategies and the development of centralized, proprietary, technology-centered urban administration and design.

Hollands argued that dominant smart city models support current trends in entrepreneurial urban governance and the corporatization and privatization of public space.18 Several scholars including Rob Kitchin, a professor and thought leader regarding relationships between urban spaces, software, and data, have positioned smart cities as emanating from (among other origins) a shift toward neoliberal entrepreneurship within city management that shaped later visions of globally competitive cities, sustainable cities, and urban theorist Richard Florida’s idea of the creative city (or the prospect that culturally rich and socially tolerant cities attract talent and foster economic development).

“smart-from-the-start” cities, new cities or districts built from scratch that adhere to some variation of smart city models (see chapter 2). These cities incorporate privately owned technologies and software on public streets and privatize aspects of public service provision and administration but are also built within free economic zones that subsidize transnational flows of enterprise and capital. Corporatization of urban management and neoliberal entrepreneurship are also evident in the private and public partnerships forged between technology industries, universities, and municipal governments in smart cities. Apart from municipal officials, none of these actors are democratically elected, they often function without public input or review,

Computers can retrieve, store, calculate, and process data. If the city is like a computer, it can be programmed to produce desired outcomes and structure urban interactions.

The connection between data provision and engagement is typically described through anecdotes about intrepid citizens who find inconsistencies in open datasets and report these deviations to authorities, or celebrated technology entrepreneurs who use city data to build apps.

Instead they propose a definition of the smart city that focuses less on ICTs and more on investment in human and social capital to produce sustainable economic growth, management of natural resources, and participatory governance.41 Current smart city development models often flip this emphasis to privilege technology as a means or determinant of economic development and resource management, neglecting important infrastructures for human and social capital, democratic processes, and equity in terms of per capita wealth, citizen agency, and access to resources and job opportunities.

What about significant urban problems that are left out of traditional smart city models such as failing school systems, poverty, neighborhood disinvestment, and lack of affordable housing?

Smart-from-the-start cities are more dependent on logics of capitalism and complex private and public partnerships than on any other aspects of development. These cities can be read as primarily economic endeavors that prioritize entrepreneurship over other urban values. Scholars situate smart city developments as new forms of “entrepreneurial urbanism” and neoliberal capitalism where the purpose of the city is to promote and foster economic growth.

Cities are framed as infrastructural management systems rather than places where people commune and live. The above quote asserts the imperative and the competitive urgency of building this type of smart city.

Companies invested in retrofitting cities with “intelligent” infrastructure note that although expensive, building smart-from-the-start cities is easier than outfitting existing cities. Interestingly, the barriers perceived by companies like Cisco, Microsoft, and IBM are qualities that define cities: people already live there, infrastructures are managed by different departments, and citizens have concerns about privacy, security, and equity.

If the same companies that sell smart technologies shape understandings of urban problems and initiatives proposed to solve these problems, then municipalities are subject to one-size-fits-all corporate smart city models.