Living labs and vacancy in the neoliberal city

Abstract

This paper evaluates smart city (SC) initiatives in the context of re-using vacant property, focusing on the role of living labs (LL). LL utilise Lo-Fi technologies to foster local digital innovation and support community-focused civic hacking, running various kinds of workshops and engaging with local citizens to co-create digital interventions and apps aimed at 'solving' local issues. Five approaches to LL are outlined and discussed in relation to vacancy and gentrification: pop-up initiatives, university-led activities, community organised venues/activities, citizen sensing and crowdsourcing, and tech-led regeneration initiatives. Notwithstanding the potential for generating temporary and independent spaces for transferring digital competences and increasing citizens' participation in the SC, we argue LL foster largely a form of participation framed within a model of civic stewardship for 'smart citizens'. While presented as horizontal, open, and participative, LL and civic hacking are rooted often in pragmatic and paternalistic discourses and practices related to the production of a creative economy and a technocratic version of SC. As such, by encouraging a particular kind of re-use of vacant space, LLs are used actively to bolster the Smart City discourse, as part of the more general neoliberalization of urban political economy. We discuss these approaches and issues generally, drawing on previous fieldwork and with respect to a case study of Dublin, Ireland.

Smart urbanism and smart citizenship: The neoliberal logic of ‘citizen-focused’ smart cities in Europe

“…Intra-city competition fits well with a speculative approach to housing, privatisation of space, and attraction of more affluent buyers, all characteristics of neoliberal urbanism which conceives urban land via exchange value rather than use value (e.g., Kitchin et al, 2012). Thus, there are concerns as to the extent to which smart city practices in regeneration programmes, such as Living Labs and hackathons, might act rather as a magnet for the in-flow and retention of 'creative classes' and as gateways for gentrification (Cardullo, Kitchin and Di Feliciantonio 2018). In other words, the latest hype around smart technologies has reinforced an already winning neoliberal discourse on city growth.…”

Women’s leadership and gendered experiences in tech cities

“…Areas of high-tech financing report renewed urban development, diversity and global citizenship (Berger and Frey, 2017;Chacko, 2007;Lee and Rodríguez-Pose, 2016). This has prompted attention from geographers interested in patterns of inequality, power and segregation (Phillips et al, 2014) and speculation about digital culture's role in a new politics of place (Amin, 2002;Cardullo et al, 2018). Yet, as we celebrate opportunities for diversity and flexible working created by tech clusters (Fuchs et al, 2017;Hollands, 2008), analysis remains limited of their character and the hierarchies within them.…”

Local entrepreneurship through a multistakeholders' tourism living lab in the post‐violence/peripheral era in the Basque Country

“…Instead, “smart tourism” should be re‐conceptualized as characterized by a democratic imperative towards a more sustainable political economy for territorial and urban development, which requires collective leadership that is constructively engaged with the local community by ensuring a highly representative participation and deliberation process and a regularly monitored action plan (Barcelona City Council, ; Harvey, ). Thus, this paper depicts an experimental methodological process carried out from January to December 2017 through Living Labs (Baccarne, Schuurman, & Merchant, ; Cardullo, Kitchin, & Di Feliciantonio, ; Steen & van Bueren, ; URB@Exp, ) to establish the 2018–2021 touristic roadmap with the participation of strategic stakeholders in the village of Zumaia as a means of both: (i) overcoming the narrow vision created by the “tourismification” phenomenon among locals; and (ii) establishing a participatory mechanism beyond the classical tools of strategic positioning.…”