Elaborating the urbanism in smart urbanism: distilling relevant dimensions for a comprehensive analysis of Smart City approaches

Abstract

Over the last decade, Smart City has increasingly become a popular urban policy approach of cities in both the Global North and Global South. Such approaches focus on digital and technology-driven urban innovation and are often considered to be a universal solution to varied urban issues in different cities. How Smart City policies operate in contemporary cities is being examined in the emerging, but still underdeveloped, academic field 'smart urbanism'. The considerable consequences of Smart City strategies call for critical engagement with the rationale, methods, target group and implications of Smart City approaches in different urban contexts. The aim of this paper is to further such critical engagement by distilling dimensions absent in current smart urbanism. We do so by exploring both the academic field of critical urbanism and smart urbanism and through that develop our contributions to the smart urbanism debate from existing theoretical and conceptual approaches within critical urbanism. We distilled three dimensions that require further development to facilitate a comprehensive analysis of what Smart City policies mean for contemporary urban life: (1) the acknowledgement that the urban is not confined to the administrative boundaries of a city; (2) the importance of local social-economic, cultural-political and environmental contingencies in analysing the development, implementation and effects of Smart City policies; and (3) the social-political construction of both the urban problems Smart City policies aim to solve and the considered solutions. As such, we argue that there is a lack of consideration for 'the urbanism' in smart urbanism. ARTICLE HISTORY

People’s strategies for perceived surveillance in Amsterdam Smart City

“…We would argue that the perceptions and strategies of our respondents indicate challenges in data governance that go beyond the idea of the "smart city" as a municipal unit. As in the past, the "urban" (Brenner, 2009;Sassen, 2008;Verrest & Pfeffer, 2018;Townsend, 2001) here points towards more global trends in digitalization and datafication of society. Administrative boundaries are losing their meaning in the context of digitalization and datafication; and at a generalized level, our study shows that the boundaries around both government and citizenry are dissipating.…”

“…The dominant framings of "smart city" development point to a post-political space of technological solutionism (Graham, 2002;Morozov, 2014), where processes of datafication and digitization have been promoted for their promise to increase efficiency, convenience, safety, and in some cases, citizen participation (Vanolo, 2014;Verrest & Pfeffer, 2018). The vision evokes orderly precision and control, optimization of resource allocation, and uninhibited flows of information, people, and materials (Luque-Ayala & Marvin, 2016).…”

Smart urban governance: an alternative to technocratic “smartness”

“…However, smart governance in practice is strongly characterized by a supply-oriented, technocratic way of governing cities (e.g., Marvin et al 2015 ). In this process, much emphasis is put on the role of technology in collecting data and producing knowledge to smarten government operations and automate urban system functions (Jiang et al 2020a , b ; Verrest and Pfeffer 2019 ; Kitchin et al 2016 ; Kitchin 2014 ). Such an approach focusing on digital and technology-driven innovation is often considered to be a universal solution to varied urban issues in different cities (Verrest and Pfeffer 2019 ).…”

“…In this process, much emphasis is put on the role of technology in collecting data and producing knowledge to smarten government operations and automate urban system functions (Jiang et al 2020a , b ; Verrest and Pfeffer 2019 ; Kitchin et al 2016 ; Kitchin 2014 ). Such an approach focusing on digital and technology-driven innovation is often considered to be a universal solution to varied urban issues in different cities (Verrest and Pfeffer 2019 ). According to some authors, technocratic “smart” governance conceals those urban issues, conflicts, and controversies that cannot be represented by digital tools and data analytics (e.g., social discrimination and mental illness) (Bina et al 2020 ; Cardullo and Kitchin 2019 ; Hashem et al 2016 ; Rathore et al 2016 ).…”

“…For them, more emphasis should be put on social inclusion, social capital, and sustainability; thereafter, we should study smart governance as a complex process of institutional change and acknowledge the political nature of appealing visions of sociotechnical governance. Verrest and Pfeffer ( 2019 , p. 1329) highlight that there is a failure to consider the “urban” as a response to “ what urban challenges related to smart cities are and what appropriate [governance] solutions are. ” This perspective indicates that we need to become more aware of how urban problems and their proposed smart solutions are socially constructed.…”