The empty rhetoric of the smart city: from digital inclusion to economic promotion in Philadelphia

Abstract

Smart city initiatives have been adopted by cities worldwide, proposing forward-looking, technological solutions to urban problems big and small. These policies are indicative of a digitized urban condition, where social and economic exchange rely on globalized telecommunications networks, and governance strategies follow suit. Propelled through events such as IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge, the smart city acts as a data-driven logic urban change where widespread benefit to a city and its residents is proposed, masking the utility of these policies to further entrepreneurial economic development strategies. In this article, I present a case study of the Digital On-Ramps initiative that emerged from IBM’s policy-consultation in Philadelphia. The initiative proposed a social media-style workforce education application (app) to train up to 500,000 low-literacy residents for jobs in the information and knowledge economy, but even as the city’s mayor declared the project a success, it did not meet expectations. This essay argues that the rhetoric of intelligent, transformative digital change works much more to “sell” a city in the global economy than to actually address urban inequalities.

Keywords:

• smart city
• internet
• entrepreneurial urbanism
• policy mobilities
• Philadelphia
• IBM

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Kevin Ward and Andrew Karvonen as well as the participants of the Cities@Manchester 2014 Summer Institute on Urban Studies for advice and encouragement. Matthew Wilson at the University of Kentucky also provided early feedback on this research, as did Renee Tapp at Clark University. Michele Masucci, Melissa Gilbert, Charles Kaylor, and Youngjin Yoo at Temple University and Rob Kitchin at National University of Ireland, Maynooth, advised the dissertation project that this essay emerged out of. Finally, editing from Alex Tarr of the University of California, Berkeley, helped this essay find its bearings, and comments from two anonymous reviewers honed the concluding statements considerably.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

The author acknowledges the support of a post-doctoral fellowship at Temple University’s Urban Apps and Maps Studios and the Office of the Vice-Provost for Research.