Global firms and smart technologies: <scp>IBM</scp> and the reduction of cities

McNeill, Donald

doi:10.1111/tran.12098

Cited by 146 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 28 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The paper begins by acknowledging the key role of constructed logics of smart urbanism (Kitchin, ; Kitchin et al., ; Krivý, ; Luque‐Ayala & Marvin, ; Vanolo, ). The range of logics analysed in this paper is diverse in terms of the actors and networks that produce them (Calzada, ; McNeill, , ; Söderström et al., ), and also with regards to their strategic aim. White (), for example, shows how smart‐city visions often depend on “anticipatory logics,” constructed notions of crisis and technocratic necessity that often become self‐fulfilling fictions (Picon, ).…”

Section: A Cultural Economy Of Smart Urbanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Varieties of smart urbanism in the UK: Discursive logics, the state and local urban context

Caprotti

Cowley

2019

Trans Inst British Geog

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The paper analyses the varieties of smart urbanism to be found in the contemporary urban landscape in the UK. In so doing, it builds on and extends two currently dominant sets of critiques of the smart city: those that call into question its technocratic and top-down modes of governance, and those that describe the smart city as an empty signifier. The paper makes sense of the UK's variegated local smart urban practices by tracing the emergence of a national, state-led cultural economy of smart urbanism. Based on an analysis of smart-city programmes in 34 UK cities, we identify two broad discursive logics through which varieties of smart urbanism are produced and performed. First, the invocation of crisis forms a discursive foundation on which place-specific logics are based. Second, sets of what we term variegated logics are differently combined to build on the "foundational story" of crisis in the construction of local smart agendas. We discuss three of these variegated logics: the city portrayed as technological simulacrum; the focus on specific sectoral activities; and a chameleonic tendency to envelop previous eco-urban agendas into smart urbanism. By making these logics visible, the paper opens up a new critical space for debate about alternative future pathways that smart cities might take. K E Y W O R D S cultural economy, digital economy, resilience, smart city, urban development, urban futures | INTRODUCTIONIt is increasingly popular to think about the urban future through the lens of smart city policies and imaginaries. However, the smart city has also been criticised as a temporary rhetorical device (de Jong et al., 2015) or an empty signifier (Davidson, 2010). The question arises of how to theorise and analyse the processes through which a nebulous concept such as smart urbanism can lead to tangible urban materialities. We understand smart urban discourses as constitutive of emergent urban materialities: as Kong & Woods; highlight, smart urbanism is, "in its abstract form, … a discursive construct that will morph over time and space; in its applied form, it is an urban response to the digital era" (2018, p. 698). We acknowledge both of these (discursive and practical) aspects by tracing the emergence of a cultural economy of smart urbanism in the UK, identifying some ways in which it is discursively performed at a local level in response to state-led steering. Making the discursive logics of this cultural economy visible opens up space for debate over the nature and purposes of smart urbanism-inflected visions of the urban future. Specifically, it highlights the key role of three intertwined factors: the use of ---

show abstract

Section: A Cultural Economy Of Smart Urbanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Varieties of smart urbanism in the UK: Discursive logics, the state and local urban context

Caprotti

Cowley

2019

Trans Inst British Geog

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Increasingly, using such technologies is presented as a form of progressive participation or empowerment wherein (primarily) urban(e) citizens are recast as ethical / green consumers. However, this reading of the rise of the online SE hides a number of less-than-positive political and environmental consequences (McNeill, 2015;Viitanen & Kingston, 2014). That is, as well as long-standing concerns about equity of access and use to internet services, under this version of the SE we are all required to be 'smart cit-izen-consumers , compelled to be technologically literate Soderstrom et al whilst having little control over the nature and content of our online sharing interactions (Vanolo, 2014).…”

Section: Is Sharing Really Caring? Questioning Social and Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diversifying and de-growing the circular economy: Radical social transformation in a resource-scarce world

Hobson

Lynch

2016

Futures

365

233

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Programmes and policies for a Circular Economy (CE) are fast becoming key to regional and international plans for creating sustainable futures. Framed as a technologically driven and economically profitable vision of continued growth in a resource-scarce world, the CE has of late been taken up by the European Commission and global business leaders alike. However, within CE debates and documentation, little is said about the social and political implications of such transformative agendas. That is, whilst CE proponents claim their agenda is 'radical', this paper outlines its inability to address many deeply embedded challenges around issues of consumption and the consumer, echoing as it does the problematic (and arguably failed) agendas of sustainable consumption / lifestyles. Using the Sharing Economy as an example, we argue here that the ontological and sociological assumptions of the CE must be open to more 'radical' critique and reconsideration if this agenda is to deliver the profound transformations that its advocates claim are within our collective reach.

show abstract

“…They are usually assumed as objective traces of facts (e.g., the status or performances of infrastructures) and considered just as functional products aimed to support public or private agencies in the efficient real-time management of planning operations, local services, and infrastructures [29]. However, the supposed rational data-driven decision trees implemented in these management processes are never isolated from the political, social and organisational constraints bounding the decisions and actions of public or private agencies [23,26,30]. For that reason, even urban operational data should be considered as part of a "data assemblage" [27] in which datasets and technologies to generate and access data are strictly dependent on the context in which data are intended to be used.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

City Data Plan: The Conceptualisation of a Policy Instrument for Data Governance in Smart Cities

Lupi

2019

Urban Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presents the conceptualisation of the City Data Plan, a data governance policy instrument intended to connect the production and use of urban data in a comprehensive and evolutive long-term strategy aligned with city development goals. The concept of the City Data Plan had been elaborated by taking into account current issues related to privacy and manipulation of data in smart city. The methodological approach adopted to define the nature of a City Data Plan is grounded on the conceptual and empirical parallelism with corporate data governance plans and general urban plans, respectively aimed to regulate decision-making powers and actions on data in enterprise contexts, and the interests of local stakeholders in the access and use of urban resources. The result of this analytic process is the formulation of the outline of a City Data Plan as a data governance policy instrument to support the iterative negotiation between the instances of data producers and data users for instantiating shared smart city visions. The conceptualisation of the City Data Plan includes a description of the multi-stakeholder organisational structures for the city data governance, cooperation protocols and decision areas, responsibilities assignments, components of the plan and its implementation mechanisms.

show abstract

Global firms and smart technologies: IBM and the reduction of cities

Cited by 146 publications

References 28 publications

Varieties of smart urbanism in the UK: Discursive logics, the state and local urban context

Varieties of smart urbanism in the UK: Discursive logics, the state and local urban context

Diversifying and de-growing the circular economy: Radical social transformation in a resource-scarce world

City Data Plan: The Conceptualisation of a Policy Instrument for Data Governance in Smart Cities

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About