Towards a genuinely humanizing smart urbanism

Abstract

This paper considers, following David Harvey (1973), how to produce a genuinely humanizing smart urbanism. It does so through utilising a future-orientated lens to sketch out the kinds of work required to reimagine, reframe and remake smart cities. I argue that, on the one hand, there is a need to produce an alternative ‘future present’ that shifts the anticipatory logics of smart cities to that of addressing persistent inequalities, prejudice, and discrimination, and is rooted in notions of fairness, equity, ethics and democracy. On the other hand, there is a need to disrupt the ‘present future’ of neoliberal smart urbanism, moving beyond minimal politics to enact sustained strategic, public-led interventions designed to create more-inclusive smart city initiatives. Both tactics require producing a deeply normative vision for smart cities that is rooted in ideas of citizenship, social justice, the public good, and the right to the city that needs to be developed in conjunction with citizens.

Towards more inclusive smart cities: Reconciling the divergent realities of data and discourse at the margins

“…Smart citizenship generally refers to civic engagement via technology whereby cities can be co‐designed and co‐created in a civic, inclusive and transparent manner. It is also a policy vision wherein urban citizens are encouraged to play a key role in the collective production and administration of the city (Roy, 2001; Datta, 2018; Luque‐Ayala and Marvin, 2015; Kitchin, 2018). Such visions of smart citizen engagement are laden with discourses of inclusion and transparency.…”

“…The logic of redefining, materialising, and ‘actualising’ (Shelton et al, 2015) is to step away from being too critical and thus hollowing out the actual notion of the smart city. The idea is to understand the complexities behind smart cities as assemblages of different political agendas, ideologies and actors that are in place to push for positive technological impacts on the lives of citizens and for the good of society (Kitchin, 2018; Shelton et al, 2015). It is about understanding the newly emerging ‘smart practices’ in a tangible and intangible manner (Neirotti, Marco, Cagliano, Mangano, & Scorrano, 2014) and actively searching for what ‘smart cities produce or allow to be done differently [and] how [that] reconfigures the urban’ (Veltz, Rutherford, & Picon, 2018, p. 134).…”

“…In this article, we contribute to the ongoing development of the notion of ‘inclusive smart cities 1 ’ in ways that better serve the purpose of recognising, critically understanding, and conceptualising smart cities that are framed according to fundamental notions of equity, justice, and liveability. We refer specifically to the growing bodies of literature on data transparency (Kitchin, 2014; Burns et al, 2018) which re‐define the publicness of smart cities (Cowley, Joss, & Dayot, 2018) and humanise smart urbanism (Kitchin, 2018) through, for example, the lens of gender (Datta, 2018). These literatures address the unequal production of, and access to, big data and related infrastructures of smart cities.…”