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

Abstract

This paper examines the neoliberal ideals that underpin participation and citizenship in the smart city and their replication mechanisms at European level. We examine self-proclaimed 'citizen-focus' projects funded by or aligned to the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC) by way of analysing policy documents and interviews with key stakeholders of smart city initiatives at European level and the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona (SCEWC 2017). We suggest that smart cities as currently conceived enact a blueprint of neoliberal urbanism and promote a form of neoliberal citizenship. Supranational institutions like the EIP-SCC act at a multi-scalar level, connecting diverse forms of neoliberal urbanism while promoting policy agendas and projects that perform neoliberal citizenship in the spaces of the everyday. Despite attempts to recast the smart city as 'citizenfocused', smart urbanism remains rooted in pragmatic, instrumental and paternalistic discourses and practices rather than those of social rights, political citizenship, and the common good. In our view, if smart cities are to become truly 'citizen-focused' an alternative conception of smart citizenship needs to be deployed, one that enables an effective shift of power and is rooted in rights, entitlements, community, participation, commons, and ideals beyond the market.

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“…Humans are often envisaged as simply another "node" of the IoT: as data-generating objects connected to other data-generating object (Lupton, 2019). Indeed, as the literature on smart cities imaginaries has demonstrated, humans tend to be "designed out" of expert visions of IoT futures (Cherry, Hopfe, MacGillivray, & Pidgeon, 2017) or treated as consumers who purchase corporate services rather than politically active citizens (Cardullo & Kitchin, 2019a, 2019b.…”

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“…[15,11] Given the all-encompassing nature of these visions, then, the question necessarily arises regarding how exactly these alterations would affect the everyday life of citizens, and whether or not citizens might have any agency in these developments, as individuals and as part of a civil society. Indeed, these developments have given rise to a whole literature of smart city critique that focuses on the business-led and technology-led nature of these developments [22,9,49] and the business models of ICT in general. These seem to revolve around the tightly entangled dynamics of data (its collection and use), privacy, inclusion and economics.…”

“…This has been the subject of scrutiny of Cardullo and Kitchin [9], who argue that the smart city agenda can be seen as a part of neoliberal urban planning; or, that smart city agendas "enact a blueprint of neoliberal urbanism and promote a form of neoliberal citizenship" [9]. According to Peck at al.…”

“…This may also affect decision making processes, as data analytics, sensing and media intertwine with ever more powerful artificial intelligence technologies (AIs), possibly circumventing public discourse and democratic systems. [9]. Overall, then, Isin and Ruppert [25] argue that there is a need for digital citizens to possess a suite of digital rights.…”