Smart cities, urban technocrats, epistemic communities and advocacy coalitions

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that the ideas, ideals and the rapid proliferation of smart city rhetoric and initiatives globally have been facilitated and promoted by three inter-related communities. A new set of 'urban technocrats' -chief innovation/technology/data officers, project managers, consultants, designers, engineers, change-management civil servants, and academics -many of which have become embedded in city administrations. A smart cities 'epistemic community'; that is, a network of knowledge and policy experts that share a worldview and a common set of normative beliefs, values and practices with respect to addressing urban issues, and work to help decision-makers identify and deploy technological solutions to solve city problems. A wider 'advocacy coalition' of smart city stakeholders and vested interests who collaborate to promote the uptake and embedding of a smart city approach to urban management and governance. We examine the roles of new urban technocrats and the multiscale formation and operation of a smart cities epistemic community and advocacy coalitions, detailing a number of institutional networks at global, supra-national, national, and local scales. In the final section, we consider the translation of the ideas and practices of the smart city into the policies and work of city administrations. In particular, we consider what might be termed the 'last mile problem' and the reasons why, despite a vast and active set of technocrats and epistemic community and advocacy coalition, smart city initiatives are yet to become fully mainstreamed and the smart city mission successfully realized in cities across the globe. We illustrate this last mile problem through a discussion of plans to introduce smart lighting in Dublin.

Ethics of Public Use of AI and Big Data

“…However, the different categories of stakeholders involved is quite diverse: private companies, philanthropy organisations, research agencies, universities, institutions, governmental bodies (regional, national, and international), city administrators, and NGOs. For the use and implementation of SIS, SIS specialist bodies are being created: regional bodies, national bodies, specialist units within existing bodies, international specialist institutions and lobby groups, as well as international standards bodies (Kitchin et al 2017;Yin et al 2015).…”

Five classes of geospatial data and the barriers to using them

“…Municipal governments publishing open data can also be seen as technocratic in their approach to urban planning. Kitchin, Coletta, Evans, Heaphy, and MacDonncha () note that cities have recently tried to use open data and other smart city initiatives to claim urban planning is data‐driven and therefore impartial. However, Kitchin et al () go on to say that data‐driven urban planning pushes decision‐making to academics and corporations, not citizens.…”

“…Kitchin, Coletta, Evans, Heaphy, and MacDonncha () note that cities have recently tried to use open data and other smart city initiatives to claim urban planning is data‐driven and therefore impartial. However, Kitchin et al () go on to say that data‐driven urban planning pushes decision‐making to academics and corporations, not citizens. Citizens not being involved in urban planning in this way perpetuates the idea that only trained experts can effectively use data, the myth of technocracy identified by Jasanoff ().…”

The anatomy of the data-driven smart sustainable city: instrumentation, datafication, computerization and related applications

“…However, topical studies tend to deal mostly with data-driven smart urbanism (e.g., [7,[35][36][37]40] while barely exploring how this approach can improve and advance sustainable urbanism under what is labeled 'data-driven smart sustainable cities' as a leading paradigm of urbanism [11,12]. Moreover, research on big data applications in the context of smart cities tends to deal largely with economic growth, the quality of life, and governance (e.g., [5, 8, 15, 26, 30-33, 35, 49] while overlooking the rather more urgent issues and complex challenges related to sustainability.…”