Understanding the roles of expectation in making the open Programmable Harbour City (OPHC)

ABSTRACT

Despite over a decade of development, smart cities remain at a stage of visions and expectations. There is a dualist attitude in the smart cities literature, whereby the research either studies the content of visions or compares the visions with the innovation outcomes. What expectations actually do in a smart city innovation process is often neglected. This article addressed this gap by adopting an ethnographic approach and applying conceptual tools from the sociology of expectations and strategic niche management to study a UK smart city project – the Open Programmable Harbour City (OPHC). This study enriches the literature on smart city vision by showing that expectation played four complex and paradoxical roles in making the OPHC: (1) It tidied up the messy past and prescribed a future. (2) It provided limited coordination for innovation activities. (3) It helped to attract attentions to the OPHC, but it also caused disappointments. (4) It provided protection for the negative experimental results, but the overprotection also impeded innovation. This article concludes with four valuable lessons about expectation management for smart city innovators and some fresh theoretical insights for the sociology of expectations and strategic niche management.

KEYWORDS:

• Smart cities
• expectation
• sociology of expectations
• strategic niche management

Acknowledgements

This research was partially supported by the University of Bristol PhD Scholarship. The paper is partially supported by Sichuan Provincial Science and Technology Department, grant ID 2020JDR0103. I thank Professor James Fleck and two referees from this journal for their invaluable comments. I also thank my PhD supervisors Professor Keri Facer and Professor Thomas Osborne.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

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Jingwen Yin

Jingwen Yin is a lecturer at School of Public Affair and Administration at University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) in China. Her research interests are smart cities, science and technology studies, sociology of expectations and transition studies. She completed her PhD studies in 2018 with a thesis entitled ‘Toads, Dome, and Lampposts - An Ethnographic Study of a Smart City in the Making.’