On alternative smart cities

Abstract

Smart urbanism seems to be everywhere you turn. But in practice the agenda is an uncertain one, usually only partially developed, and often more about corporate-led urban development than about urban social justice. Rather than leave smart urbanism to the corporate and political elites, there are opportunities now for critical urban scholarship to not only critique how it is currently constituted, but to give shape to a globally oriented alternative smart urban agenda. An ambition like this means taking the ‘urban’ in ‘smart urban’ much more seriously. It means foregrounding the knowledges, political priorities and needs of those either actively excluded or included in damaging ways in mainstream smart urban discourses. We outline steps towards an alternative smart urbanism. We seek to move beyond the specific to the general and do so by drawing on radically different initiatives across the Global North and South. These initiatives provide tantalizing openings to a more socially just use of digital technology, where urban priorities and justice drive the use—or lack of use—of technology.

Key words:

• urban geography
• smart cities
• Global South
• urban policies
• slums
• mental health

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Ayona Datta, Francisco Klauser, Simon Marvin and Pushpa Arabindoo for very helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Thanks too to the anonymous referees for their time and input.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This is before we ask whether the critique is operating effectively: as Boltanski and Chiapello (1999) put it a few years ago, ‘the main factor explaining the solidity of capitalism since the 19th c is probably its capacity to listen to critique’.

2 See in particular call H2020-SCC-2015: http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/h2020/topics/2148-scc-01-2015.html

3 See, for instance, the social economy start-up PlataformaSaúde: http://www.plataformasaude.net.br/#!about-us/c4yk

4 See, for instance, the Hyderabad Urban Lab (http://hydlab.in/blog/notes/commentary/will-the-real-hyderabad-please-stand-up/) on which more below.

5 http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/ca/en/smarter_cities/overview/

6 See the arguments of the engineer Bihouix (2014) on the necessity of low-tech solutions (allowing repairability and collective use) in the perspective of a technically sustainable future.

7 We are aware of the limits of etymological argumentation—as exemplified by Heidegger’s (ab)use of etymology as ground truths, for instance, in texts such as ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’ (Heidegger 1971). What we pursue here is a kind of ‘strategic etymologism’ as a form of critique.

8 Water and energy were in previous versions of IBM’s smarter cities vision considered together, but are now seen as separate urban systems.

9 See references in the previous paragraph for some key work.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Colin McFarlane

Colin McFarlane is Professor in Geography at Durham University. Email: [email protected]

Ola Söderström

Ola Söderström is Professeur ordinaire (Géographie sociale et culturelle) at Institut de géographie, Université of Neuchâtel.