The ‘actually existing smart city’

Shelton, Taylor; Zook, Matthew; Wiig, Alan

doi:10.1093/cjres/rsu026

Cited by 621 publications

(477 citation statements)

References 26 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

457

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The normative and imperative position of building resilient cities, by addressing risk reduction, is similar to the normative and positive framing of building sustainable/smart cities, by increasing the well-being of the citizens, while reducing their environmental impacts. New digital technologies can be employed to serve this purpose [10]. The top down, technocratic focus on energy systems, mobility, and resource efficiency led by the ongoing smart city discourse runs the risk of neglecting the human element when addressing urban sustainability [10][11][12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are People Responsive to a More Sustainable, Decentralized, and User-Driven Management of Urban Metabolism?

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Smart, green, and resilient city paradigms have been mainly promoted through top-down and technocratic approaches. However, based on the notion to return to "the right to the city", emerging community-driven initiatives are providing self-managed infrastructures contributing to urban sustainability transitions. This paper explores the relevance of the behavioral aspects of people-centered approaches in dealing with two different facets of urban metabolism: physical infrastructure (involvement with the management of decentralized infrastructures) and consumption patterns (involvement in proactive reduction of resources used). In the first case we assessed community perceptions about the roles, benefits, and willingness to proactively engage in the management of decentralized green infrastructures in Bogotá City, Colombia. For the second facet, we measured the effectiveness of change agents in re-shaping energy consumption decisions within urban social networks in South Africa and Saudi Arabia. This paper's results show that pre-determined and standardized strategies do not guarantee positive, nor homogeneous, results in terms of meeting sustainability targets, or promoting community involvement. Hence, a better integration of people-centered and top-down approaches is needed through context-dependent policies, for enhancing both users' appreciation of and commitment to urban metabolism participative management.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are People Responsive to a More Sustainable, Decentralized, and User-Driven Management of Urban Metabolism?

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…While there are some attempts to engage with local communities through LL initiatives, they are largely tokenistic attempts to play out good corporate social responsibility, as opposed to creating a SC from the bottom-up. This seems to be a feature of other urban development districts too, such as the redeveloped Navy Yards in Philadelphia (Shelton et al 2015), the Innovation District in Boston, and the 'cultural quarter' of Shoreditch in London. Here, rather than local communities fully benefiting from economic revitalisation, the creative class are being drawn into these new digital hubs displacing…”

Section: The Regenerated Citymentioning

confidence: 96%

Living Labs, vacancy, and gentrification

Cardullo¹,

Kitchin²

2017

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Published as an open access pre-print on SocArXiv: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/waq2e Abstract This paper evaluates smart city (SC) initiatives in the context of re-using vacant property. More specifically, we focus on living labs (LL) and vacancy in general, as well as on their potential role in fostering creative economy-fuelled gentrification. 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 and fostering digital competences and increasing citizens' participation in the SC, we argue that LL largely foster 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 often rooted in pragmatic and paternalistic discourses and practices related to the production of a creative economy and a specific version of SC. As such, by encouraging a particular kind of re-use of vacant space, LL potentially contributes to gentrification pressures within locales by attracting the creative classes and new investment. We discuss these approaches and issues generally and with respect to examples in Dublin, Ireland.

show abstract

“…It is used for branding [19] and marketing [20]. When an area is promoted as 'smart', the property prices in that area goes up, benefiting only the wealthy [21].…”

Section: Smart City Of Just a City?mentioning

confidence: 99%