Urban Policy Mobilities: The Case of Turin as a Smart City

Abstract

This article analyses urban policy mobilities taking into consideration the idea of the smart city, which is currently a sort of leitmotif used in many cities within the framework of discourses on urban development. More specifically, this article offers an analysis concerning the circulation and implementation of the idea of the smart city in Turin, Italy. It investigates the actors, processes and networks involved in the mobilization and reproduction of the idea, as well as the mechanisms, concerning the embedding of the smart city discourse in the institutional fabric of the city of Turin, Italy. It also emphasizes how urban policy mobility can develop even without processes of "imitation" and "adaptation" of best practices from other cities.

Smart contradictions: The politics of making Barcelona a Self-sufficient city

“…It also shows how the intended solutions face problems in being applied in different contexts or neighbourhoods. Thus, it is necessary to explore not only how Smart City projects are produced in place, but also how these ideas are mobilised, translated and replicated elsewhere in a comparative way (see Crivello (2014) for the case of Turin, Italy). In particular, it is relevant to inquire how the Smart City concept (a Global North concept) translates to the cities of the Global South and with what implications.…”

“…This can also be explained, by the novelty of the concept and its recent adoption -at least on paper -by city councils. Nonetheless, recently, more empirically based studies on the implications of Smart Cities in urban strategies at the European level have blossomed (see, for instance, Crivello (2014) and Vanolo (2014b)). …”

Political ecologies of a waste incinerator in Turin, Italy: Capital circulation and the production of urban natures

“…Turin grew side by side with the FIAT automobile industry, but since the 1980s, the progressive crisis in the manufacturing sector pushed local policy makers towards the quest for economic differentiation (Vanolo, 2015a). For this reason, over time Turin has tried to brand itself as a techno-city, a cultural and creative city, and recently as a green, smart city (Crivello, 2014).…”

The Variegated Economics and the Potential Politics of the Smart City

“…In the public discourse, the ICT sector is being redefined as 'smart technologies', which shows the close linkage with the politics of smart urbanism. A key role is played in this context by the Fondazione Torino Wireless (or Wireless Turin Foundation) committed to revamping this sector nationally and globally (see CRIVELLO, 2014). This foundation was established on the basis of a public-private partnership involving local governments, universities and research centres, financial institutions and influential private companies based in the surrounding region specializing in the electronic, mechanic and aerospace sectors.…”

“…In more recent times, however, the smart city discourse has achieved a growingly global reach, attracting the attention of politico-economic elites and policy-makers across the globe, well beyond the confines of conventional urban planning circles. The notion of smart city has thus become a paradigmatic example of cross-national policy mobility, in light of its fast circulation at the global scale (MACLEOD, 2013;CRIVELLO, 2014). As a model of urban and economic development under conditions of 'planetary urbanisation' (BRENNER and SCHMID, 2014), the notion of smart city has reached an increasingly cross-sectoral dimension, transversally touching on a wide range of socio-economic domains related to the urban experience in which socially interactive digital technologies are said to play an increasingly relevant role: from mobility and transportation to the environment, from civil infrastructure to urban consumption, from tourism to urban security.…”