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Will the Real Smart City Please Stand Up?

December 2008
City 12(3):303-320

DOI:10.1080/13604810802479126

Authors:

Robert Hollands

Newcastle University

Debates about the future of urban development in many Western countries have been increasingly influenced by discussions of smart cities. Yet despite numerous examples of this 'urban labelling' phenomenon, we know surprisingly little about so-called smart cities, particularly in terms of what the label ideologically reveals as well as hides. Due to its lack of definitional precision, not to mention an underlying self-congratulatory tendency, the main thrust of this article is to provide a preliminary critical polemic against some of the more rhetorical aspects of smart cities. The primary focus is on the labelling process adopted by some designated smart cities, with a view to problematizing a range of elements that supposedly characterize this new urban form, as well as question some of the underlying assumptions/contradictions hidden within the concept. To aid this critique, the article explores to what extent labelled smart cities can be understood as a high-tech variation of the 'entrepreneurial city', as well as speculates on some general principles which would make them more progressive and inclusive.

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Will the real smart city please stand up?

Robert G. Hollands

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CITY, VOL. 12, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2008

ISSN 1360-4813 print/ISSN 1470-3629 online/08/030303-18 © 2008 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13604810802479126

Will the real smart city please

stand up?

Intelligent, progressive or entrepreneurial?

Robert G. Hollands

Taylor and Francis Ltd

Debates about the future of urban development in many Western countries have been

increasingly influenced by discussions of smart cities. Yet despite numerous examples of this

‘urban labelling’ phenomenon, we know surprisingly little about so-called smart cities,

particularly in terms of what the label ideologically reveals as well as hides. Due to its lack

of definitional precision, not to mention an underlying self-congratulatory tendency, the

main thrust of this article is to provide a preliminary critical polemic against some of the

more rhetorical aspects of smart cities. The primary focus is on the labelling process adopted

by some designated smart cities, with a view to problematizing a range of elements that

supposedly characterize this new urban form, as well as question some of the underlying

assumptions/contradictions hidden within the concept. To aid this critique, the article

explores to what extent labelled smart cities can be understood as a high-tech variation of

the ‘entrepreneurial city’, as well as speculates on some general principles which would

make them more progressive and inclusive.

Introduction

ebates about the future of urban

development in many Western

countries have been increasingly

influenced by discussions of smart cities

(American Urban Land Institute, 2007;

Thorns, 2002; Coe et al., 2000; New Zealand

Smart Growth Network, 2000; Eger, 1997),

and there have been numerous examples of

cities designated as smart in recent years.

In the USA, information and communica-

tion technologies (ICTs) are seen as major

factors in shaping and ensuring the

success of San Diego as a ‘City of the

Future’, while in Canada, Industry Canada

injected $60 million into its nationwide

‘Smart Communities’ initiative, including

Ottawa’s ‘Smart Capital’ project involving

enhancing business, local government and

community use of internet resources. In the

UK, Southampton claims to be the coun-

try’s first smart city by virtue of the devel-

opment of its multi-application smartcard,

while in south-east Asia, Singapore’s

IT2000 plan was designed to create an ‘intel-

ligent island’, with information technology

(IT) transforming work, life and play (Wei

Choo, 1997). Numerous other examples

abound from across the globe—from

Bangalore, India’s own Silicon Valley

(Graham, 2002), Brisbane, Australia’s

‘sustainable’ brand of smart urbanism, to a

whole host of cities pursuing culturally-

based initiatives emphasizing the arts

(Eger, 2003a), digital media, and culturally

creative industries more generally (Florida,

2005). These handful of examples are far

D

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304 CITY VOL. 12, NO. 3

from atypical. The 1997 World Forum on

Smart Cities suggested that around 50,000

cities and towns around the world would

develop smart initiatives over the next

decade.

While it is obvious that IT and creative

industries can and indeed have transformed

many urban areas economically, socially

and spatially (see Graham and Marvin, 2001;

1996; Florida, 2002), it might equally be

argued that the characterization of these

changes through the use of the term smart

cities can create certain assumptions about

this transformation, as well as play down

some of the underlying urban issues and

problems inherent in the labelling process

itself (Begg, 2002). Part of the problem

concerns the manner in which and variety

of ways the term ‘smart’ is employed. For

example, while the adjective smart clearly

implies some kind of positive urban-based

technological innovation and change via

ICTs, analogous to the wired (Dutton,

1987), digital (Ishido, 2002), telecommunica-

tions (Graham and Marvin, 1996), informa-

tional (Castells, 1996) or intelligent city

(Komninos, 2002), it has also been utilized

(not unproblematically) in relation to ‘e-

governance’ (Eurocities, 2007; Van der Meer

and Van Wilden, 2003), communities and

social learning (Coe et al., 2000), and in

addressing issues of urban growth and social

and environmental sustainability (Smart

Growth Network, 2007; Polese and Stren,

2000; Satterthwaite, 1999). Further termi-

nological confusion arises around the link

between IT, knowledge, and the culturally

creative industries (arts, media, culture), in

discussions about the knowledge economy

(Carrillo, 2006; Wolfe and Holbrook, 2002),

and debates about creative cities1 (see Eger,

2003a; Florida, 2002; Hall, 2000; Landry,

2000). Finally, it might be argued that the

problematic mapping of the smart label onto

a series of other seemingly progressive

debates and concepts concerning the tech-

nological and creative city, creates not only

definitional problems, it also hints at some

of the more normative and ideological

dimensions of the concept/label. Not

surprisingly, there are few analyses of smart

city discourse from the point of view of more

critical urban perspectives, such as ideas

surrounding the ‘entrepreneurial city’

(Harvey, 1989), the growing domination of

neo-liberal urban activities and spaces (Peck

and Tickell, 2002), not to mention the exist-

ing literature on urban place marketing

(Begg, 2002; Short et al., 2000).

Due to its definitional impreciseness,

numerous unspoken assumptions and a

rather self-congratulatory tendency (what

city does not want to be smart or intelli-

gent?), the main aim of this article is to

provide a preliminary critical polemic

against some of the more rhetorical aspects

of cities labelled as smart.2 In performing

this task, there are a number of important

qualifications and caveats to make. First,

the purpose of this paper is not to provide a

clearer and more empirically verifiable defi-

nition of what a smart city actually is, but

rather to explore how some of its underly-

ing assumptions can result in a rather

normative and celebratory evaluation of

the label. Second, whilst alluding to some of

the wider commentary and critique

surrounding IT, cities and spatiality (see

Graham and Marvin, 2001; Webster, 2002;

Castells, 1996 for instance), rather than

directly review or assess this wider litera-

ture, the paper specifically focuses its

critique on cities which have been ‘desig-

nated/labelled’ as smart. As such, its

purpose is not to empirically define or prove

that smart cities do or do not exist, nor is it

to assess to what degree such cities are

successful or not at being smart. Such a task

would require a measurable comparative3

and/or case study method. Rather, the

focus here is on the ‘labelling process’ itself

adopted by a range of smart cities, with

a view to problematizing aspects of this so-

called ‘new’ urban form, as well as question

some of the underlying assumptions/

contradictions hidden within this process.

To aid this critique, the article also explores

to what extent such labelled smart cities can

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HOLLANDS: WILL THE REAL SMART CITY PLEASE STAND UP? 305

be seen as a ‘high-tech’ variation of urban

entrepreneurialism (see Jessop, 1997), intro-

duces a social justice element into the debate

(Harvey, 2000), and hints at some general

principles which might characterize a

more progressive and inclusive smart city

(Chatterton, 2000).

The first two sections of the paper critically

interrogate some definitions and elements of

smart cities by briefly exploring their roots in

wider debates, as well as teasing out some

constituent elements through reference to

numerous examples of cities which publicly

market themselves as smart. A third section

further develops a polemical critique of

these self-promotional examples by stressing

their underlying pro-business and neo-liberal

bias, including questioning their various

assumptions about transformations in urban

governance and rhetoric of community partic-

ipation, as well as raising hidden questions

about social justice and sustainability. The

main argument advanced is that smart urban

labelling plays down some of the negative

effects the development of new technological

and networked infrastructures are having on

cities (see Graham and Marvin, 2001), whilst

over-looking alternative critical analyses of

urban development associated with the entre-

preneurial city (Harvey, 2000) and the grow-

ing domination of new-liberal urban space

(Peck and Tickell, 2002).

Smart cities: difficulties of definition

In today’s modern urban context, we appear

to be constantly bombarded with a wide

range of new city discourses like smart, intel-

ligent, innovative, wired, digital, creative, and

cultural, which often link together techno-

logical informational transformations with

economic, political and socio-cultural

change. One of the difficulties is separating

out the terms themselves, which often appear

to borrow on one another’s assumptions, or

in some cases, get conflated together. A

second problem with such urban labelling is

separating out the hype and use of such terms

for place marketing purposes (Begg, 2002;

Harvey, 2000; Short et al., 2000) as opposed

to referring to actual infrastructural change

or evidence of workable and effective IT

policies. In essence, the disjuncture between

image and reality here may be the real differ-

ence between a city actually being intelligent,

and it simply lauding a smart label. A third

problem with many of these terms is that

they often imply, by their very nature, a

positive and rather uncritical stance towards

urban development. Which city, by defini-

tion, does not want to be smart, creative and

cultural?

Many of these points appear to apply to

the smart city discourse. For example,

Komninos (2002, p. 1) in his attempt to

delineate the intelligent city, (perhaps the

concept most closely related to the smart

city), cites four possible meanings. The first,

concerns the application of a wide range of

electronic and digital applications to commu-

nities and cities, which effectively work to

conflate the term with ideas about the cyber,

digital, wired, informational or knowledge-

based city. A second meaning is the use of

information technology to transform life and

work within a region in significant and

fundamental ways (somewhat akin to the

smart communities idea in the literature—i.e.

see Roy, 2001; Coe et al., 2000). A third

meaning of intelligent or smart is as embed-

ded information and communication tech-

nologies in the city, and a fourth as spatial

territories that bring ICTs and people

together to enhance innovation, learning,

knowledge and problem solving (the latter

being related somewhat to the smart growth

agenda—see below). Overall then, Komninos

(2006, p. 1) sees intelligent (smart) cities as

‘…territories with high capacity for learning

and innovation, which is built-in the creativ-

ity of their population, their institutions of

knowledge creation, and their digital infra-

structure for communication and knowledge

management’.

While this definition of intelligent (smart)

cities initially appears to be a useful way of

categorizing and indeed combining different

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306 CITY VOL. 12, NO. 3

aspects of the term, it also hints at some of

the problems cited earlier. First, there is a

clear problem conflating smart cities with a

range of terms like cyber, digital, wired,

knowledge cities etc., when in fact these

various ideas themselves have somewhat

different meanings. For example, wired cities

(Dutton, 1987) refer literally to the laying

down of cable and connectivity (not in itself

necessarily smart), digital cities often infer

virtual reconstructions of cities (i.e. like the

virtual Digital City of Amsterdam, also see

Ishido, 2002 on ‘digital Kyoto’), and knowl-

edge-based cities frequently focus on the

relation of universities and academic knowl-

edge and their links to the business world

(Slaughter and Rhoades, 2004; Deem, 2001),

relations which don’t only depend on ICT

infrastructure (although they often do, see

Carillo, 2006). The use of the terms innova-

tion and creativity in the above definition

also hints at the relationship between IT,

knowledge and media/cultural industries,

problematically invoking at least some of the

discourses of the creative city (see Peck,

2005). Second, while all of these terms imply

that IT has a significant impact on cities,

which it clearly does, they also emphasise

quite different aspects of this relationship.

For example, some aspects may be more

technologically driven (i.e. cables and wires)

and determinist (i.e. embedded systems of

technology), others refer to types of informa-

tion and human networks (i.e. academic

knowledge, business innovation, etc), while

still others emphasise more human capital

approaches to do with skills, education,

competencies and creativity.

Similarly the ‘smart growth’ agenda4 has

been described as a rather wide-ranging

approach which can be typified as those

urban regions seeking to utilize innovative

ITC’s, architectural planning and design,

creative and cultural industries, and concepts

of social and environmental sustainability, in

order to address various economic, spatial,

social and ecological problems facing many

cities today (see Thorns, 2002). Different

aspects of this agenda have focused in on

innovative forms of ‘e’ or ‘virtual’ governance

and citizen participation (Eurocities, 2007;

Van der Meer and Van Wilden, 2003; Eger

2003b), smart communities and social learn-

ing approaches (Paquet, 2001; Roy, 2001; Coe

et al., 2000), and social and environmental

sustainability in urban regions (Polese and

Stren, 2000; Inoguchi et al., 1999; Satterth-

waite, 1999). Yet, even within more progres-

sive sounding models of smart communities

and smart growth there are inherent hidden

assumption and ideological contradictions.

For instance, the notion of IT transforming

life and work within a region, found within

the smart communities literature (Coe et al.,

2000; as well as in Komninos, 2002, second

definition of intelligent cities above), not only

begs the question ‘how, and in what way is it

being transformed?’, but it also automatically

assumes that there is some kind of commu-

nity ‘consensus’ and involvement in the

transition, and that such a change is inher-

ently positive. Similarly, what if some smart

initiative which started out as publicly funded

and with social inclusion as a goal, become

overtaken by private sector concerns whose

goal becomes purely profit-making? What

happens to ‘balance’ with the smart growth

agenda, for instance, when community inter-

ests are superseded by developer’s interests,

or the requirements of capital accumulation

do not easily square with environmental and

social sustainability?

In attempting to pin down what is smart

about the smart city, one finds that not only

does it involve quite a diverse range of

things—information technology, business

innovation, governance, communities and

sustainability—it can also be suggested that

the label itself often makes certain assump-

tions about the relationship between these

things (i.e. regarding consensus and balance

discussed earlier for instance). The point here

is not to try and offer a better definition, or

argue that all smart cities are essentially the

same. Nor is it to prove or disprove how

smart they are according to some empirical

criteria. Instead, the emphasis of the next

section is to critically focus on numerous

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HOLLANDS: WILL THE REAL SMART CITY PLEASE STAND UP? 307

examples of places using the label smart

(designated or self-designated), in order to

practically untangle some of the elements

involved in making them up, and critically

explore what the relationship between these

elements is, or what they are assumed to be.5

This polemical exercise and analysis is

deemed necessary to counter some of the

taken for granted and self-congratulatory

rhetoric of the smart-label bandwagon.

‘Unwrapping’ the smart city label

One of the key elements which stands out in

the smart (intelligent) city literature is the

utilization of networked infrastructures to

improve economic and political efficiency and

enable social, cultural and urban development

(Komninos, 2006; Eger, 1997). While this

involves the use of a wide range of infrastruc-

tures including transport, business services,

housing and a range of public and private

services (including leisure and lifestyle

services), it is ICTs in particular that undergird

all of these networks and which lie at the core

of the smart city idea (see Graham and Marvin,

2001; Komninos, 2002). As Graham (2002, p.

34) argues, ICTs—including mobile and land

line phones, satellite TVs, computer networks,

electronic commerce and internet services—

are one of the main economic driving forces in

cities and urban regions, producing numerous

social and spatial effects. Smart cities, by defi-

nition, appear to be ‘wired cities’, although

this cannot be the sole defining criterion as it

will later be argued. The Canadian city of

Ottawa with 65 per cent of the population

connected to the internet (not to mention its

clustering of numerous software firms) is one

example, while Blacksburg, USA, a university

town of 38,000 which has a 100 per cent hook-

up rate is another case in point. Andrew

Michael Cohill, of Virginia Tech University

and director of the Blacksburg Electronic

Village project has argued telecommunica-

tions ‘…is the highway system of the twenty-

first century’ (cited in Evans, 2002), and many

towns and cities across North America,

Europe, and in the developing world, are

increasingly wedded to the idea that they have

to be connected in order to be competitive in

the new global economy (Graham and

Marvin, 2001).

While there are numerous well-known

examples of cities and regions developing

through this route, including Singapore (Wei

Choo, 1997), Silicon Valley and more

recently San Francisco’s ‘Multimedia Gulch’

in the US, and Bangalore (Asia’s own Silicon

Valley) (see Graham, 2002), the interesting

thing is the degree to which many ‘ordinary’

cities have taken up the mantra that informa-

tion technology equals urban regeneration.

For example, Newcastle Upon Tyne’s

economic strategy reflected in the document,

Competitive Newcastle (whose by-line is ‘a

dynamic entrepreneurial city at the heart of a

knowledge based regional economy’) has

prioritized digital technology and the creative

industries as one of its eight main business

clusters. The idea of becoming an ‘E-City’ is

also mentioned on the city council website,

involving investing in broadband infrastruc-

ture, smart cards, e-commerce and portal

based electronic service delivery, as is a joint

£10 million partnership project between

Newcastle City Council and Digitalbrain Plc

to turn Newcastle into Europe’s first ‘Digital

City’ (Newcastle City Council, 2006).

Another interesting North American exam-

ple here is Halifax, on Canada’s traditionally

deprived East coast. In a speech titled Smart

Growth for a Smart City: A New Economic

Vision for Halifax, Brian Crowley the

President of the Atlantic Institute for Market

Studies states that location is no longer the

key to economic success because ‘…the three

most important things now affecting the

future prosperity and development of human

communities are technology, technology, and

technology’ (quoted in Siemiatycki, 2002). A

final example here is San Diego. Because of its

highly-educated workforce and mix of high-

tech industry and recreational assets, a

marketing consortium of high-tech industries

has dubbed San Diego ‘Technology’s Perfect

Climate’ (City of San Diego, 2007).

Downloaded By: [University of Newcastle upon Tyne] At: 14:00 28 January 2009

308 CITY VOL. 12, NO. 3

A second element characterizing many self-

designated smart cities is their underlying

emphasis on business-led urban development.

There is a general world-wide recognition

(and indeed acceptance) of the domination of

neo-liberal urban spaces (Brenner and

Theodore, 2002), a subtle shift in urban gover-

nance in most western cities from managerial

to entrepreneurial forms (Quilley, 2000;

Harvey, 1989), and cities being shaped

increasingly by big-business and/or corpora-

tions (Gottdiener, 2001; Klein, 2000;

Monbiot, 2000). This is no less true for self-

designated smart cities. As the Edmonton,

Canada, Smart City webpage (City of

Edmonton, 2006) states, a smart city is char-

acterized by ‘a vibrant economy where busi-

nesses want to locate and expand’. It is

interesting to note that six out of the ten

features mentioned on their web pages

mention or imply ‘business-led’ or ‘business-

friendly’ criteria. And under the category of

smart business and industry, the Edmonton

webpage focuses perhaps predictably on

technology sectors, including things like

information technology and bio-tech indus-

tries, as well as highlighting the advantages of

having clusters of high-tech companies

together and possessing an advanced telecom-

munications infrastructure. Another example

comes from the economic development

section of the city of San Diego’s website,

whose logo is ‘San Diego—The Perfect

Climate for Business’ (City of San Diego,

2007). Even the progressive sounding smart-

growth.org web-site admits: ‘…Only private

capital markets can supply the large amounts

of money needed to meet the growing demand

for smart growth developments’ (Smart

Growth Network, 2007). Often this element

is couched in terms of talking about business

as a whole, including small- and medium-

sized enterprises (SMEs) and through the

language of businesses ‘co-operation’ and

‘consultation’ with local government

(‘public–private partnerships’) and communi-

ties, rather than representing this relationship

as one of potentially conflicting interests and

contradictions (Harvey, 2000).

There is also a developing link between

business-driven urban development, technol-

ogy, and the changing role and function of

urban governance (Harvey, 1989) in the

smart city. While the UK city of Southamp-

ton’s SmartCities project (part financed by

the European Commission) focuses around a

smartcard system of accessing local govern-

ment services such as libraries and leisure

services (Southampton City Council, 2006),

and hence makes reference to issues of social

inclusion, it also intends to create ‘a unified

interface between city, authorities, commer-

cial organizations and citizens’. Furthermore,

the contention that the ‘…integration of

commercial applications, such as loyalty card

schemes, will further develop commercial

relations between citizens and private organi-

zations’ (Kirkland, nd) hints at a rather

different type of market-led smart agenda. In

Edmonton, high-tech business-led growth

and development are seen to require local

government support in terms of providing a

‘strong pro-business environment’, and

‘reasonable taxes and low cost to live and to

do business’ (City of Edmonton, 2006) as

well as a providing a highly skilled and

educated workforce, and creating partner-

ships between education, business and

government. San Diego (‘Technology’s

Perfect Climate’) boasts one of the most

competitive sales tax rates in California (7.75

per cent) and its business tax rate is lower

than any of the 20 largest US cities (City of

San Diego, 2007). All examples here very

much echo Harvey’s (1989) discussion of the

role of local government as civic boosters and

aiding urban entrepreneurialism, through

providing public–private partnerships and

knowledge transfer through higher education

institutions (Wolfe and Holbrook, 2002). It

also ties in with the more peripheral litera-

ture on growth coalitions (Logan and

Molotch, 1987); urban regimes (Stone, 1993;

Elkin, 1987) and urban place marketing

(Short et al., 2000).

Of course there exist other models of e-

governance that are more directed towards

intra-city co-operation, while others lean

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HOLLANDS: WILL THE REAL SMART CITY PLEASE STAND UP? 309

towards social learning, inclusion and

community development. For example, with

respect to e-governance, the European Digital

Cities (EDC) programme which started in

1996, was designed to share information and

good local government practice amongst

European cities through common internet

portal sites (Komninos, 2002). Eurocities

now has working groups on e-citizenship and

e-governance, and is clearly committed ‘…to

ensuring that everyone can have access to

ICTs and participate in the Knowledge

Society’ (Eurocities, 2007). The latter empha-

sis on social learning/community develop-

ment is best represented perhaps in the idea of

smart community initiatives in Canada (Coe

et al., 2000). Komninos (2002, p. 188)

describes smart communities as where

business, government and residents use new

technology to transform life and work in their

region, while Roy (2001, p. 7) defines it as ‘…a

holistic approach to helping entire communi-

ties go online to connect to local governments,

schools, businesses, citizens and health and

social services in order to create specific

services to address local objectives and to help

advance collective skills and capacities’. The

key question such interesting initiatives raise

is how to effectively balance the needs of the

community, with both those of local govern-

ment and the needs of business, particularly

corporations (Monbiot, 2000).

While two of the main aspects of

designated smart cities are the use of new

technologies and a strong pro-business/

entrepreneurial state ethos, a related concern

is with particular high-tech and creative

industries such as digital media, the arts and

the cultural industries more generally (see

Florida, 2005; Eger, 2003a; Hall, 2000; Scott,

2000). In Europe, the work of Landry and

Bianchini (1995) has emphasised the issues

for the creative city of the future will focus

upon its ‘soft infrastructure’, including such

things as knowledge networks, voluntary

organizations, safe crime-free environments

and a lively after dark entertainment

economy. Similarly, in the USA, Richard

Florida’s creativity schema is popularly

represented by the three ‘t’s’ of economic

development—tolerance, technology and

talent, and his concern with catering for the

creative classes lifestyles and needs (Florida,

2002). Although Florida includes a technol-

ogy measure here, and discusses various frac-

tions of the creative classes working in IT,

science, and the digital media, he broadens

the notion of creativity to the cultural indus-

tries more generally. He also emphasizes the

importance of other characteristics of the

population including diversity, tolerance and

even ‘bohemia’ (defined as the concentrations

of writers, designers, musicians, and artists in

a city—see Florida, 2002). In essence, the

bulk of writers in the creative city discourse

emphasise the social and human dimensions

of the city (see Landry, 2000), as much, if not

more than, the technological emphasis at the

core of the smart city. There is also generally

more of a focus here on how alternative

cultures can help fuel urban growth

(although see Peck, 2005 for a trenchant

critique of Florida’s work here), rather than

relying on new technology or corporate busi-

nesses (although some emphasise how the

arts/culture environment can also contribute

to the ‘new economy’ of cities, see Eger,

2003a, pp. 14–15).

This more ‘humanist’ emphasis ties in with

other related discourses of smart communi-

ties, including the importance of social lean-

ing, education and social capital for

developing the smart city (Eger, 2003b). For

example, the City of Brisbane, has adopted a

10 year Smart City vision aimed at addressing

and promoting the following: information

access; lifelong learning; the digital divide;

social inclusion and economic development

(Siemiatycki, 2002). Coe et al. (2001, p. 13)

also generally admit while the emphasis of

smart cities is very much on economic growth,

they ‘…are not possible outside of the devel-

opment of smart communities—communities

that have learned how to learn, adapt and

innovate’. Similarly, the role of social capital,

defined as the construction of social relations

and networks of trust and reciprocity (see

Carley et al., 2001), is considered necessary in

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310 CITY VOL. 12, NO. 3

order to engage all stakeholders to participate

and engage with a smart city. Connection

rates are only a limited measure of success. It

is also recognized that technology has to be

utilizable and understandable by the commu-

nities that it is supposed to serve (Evans,

2002), and that ordinary people and commu-

nities need to have the skills necessary to

utilize ICTs.

Finally, present within some smart city

agendas is a concern with both social and

environmental sustainability. Social sustain-

ability implies social cohesion and sense of

belonging (Carley et al., 2001), while envi-

ronmental sustainability refers to the ecolog-

ical and ‘green’ implications of urban growth

and development (Gleeson and Low, 2000;

Inoguchi et al., 1999). With respect to the

first type, it is recognized by some that the

smart city has to be an inclusive not just

technological city (Helgason, 2002). As Coe

et al., (2000, p. 21), argue, ‘…local commu-

nity partnerships—not wires—are the fibres

that bind’ smart communities’. With respect

to the second type of sustainability, it is

equally recognized that while cities may be

drivers of economic growth, they are also

great consumers of resources and creators of

environmental waste (Low et al., 2000;

Satterthwaite, 1999). For example, it is esti-

mated that urban areas consume around 75

per cent of the worlds resources (80 per cent

of fossil fuels) and produce most of its waste

(Baird, 1999). All told then, self-designated

smart cities project different emphases and

can mean different things to different people.

However, it might also be suggested that not

all the elements mentioned here have equal

weighting in the labelling process. The next

section provides a critique of the interplay

between these various aspects by looking

deeper into some the self-designated smart

cities already discussed.

Critiquing self-designated smart cities

In order to further assess the labelled smart

city, it is important to step back and look more

critically at some of its main assumptions, and

query the positive spin given to its main

elements. For example, in unproblematically

adopting some of the assumptions from the IT

model of urban development (Eger, 1997),

some smart cities might be critiqued as being

technologically determined. In a word, undue

influence can be attributed solely to urban

technological advancements in explaining

what happens in cities and how they are

currently being shaped. While there is no

denying the impact of ICTs on the urban form

(Graham and Marvin, 1996), and of course

this process may be viewed critically (i.e. see

Graham and Marvin, 2001; Webster, 2002),

there can be a more conservative application

here that implies that somehow information

technology itself will deliver the smart city a

priori—a kind of technological ‘Field of

Dreams’ scenario (see Eger, 1997; Dutton,

1987 for instance).

However, some recognize that smart cities

have to be more than just broadband

networks. As Chris Wilson of the University

of Ottawa Centre on Governance has argued

‘Being connected is no guarantee of being

smart’ (quoted in Evans, 2002). Similarly,

Paquet (2001) suggests that although technol-

ogy is an enabler, it is not necessarily the most

critical factor in defining the smart city. One

of the best examples of the mismatch between

developing technologies and low take up

comes from Graham’s (2002) discussion of

the South American city of Lima. Despite

increasing rates of telecommunication diffu-

sion, in 1990 less than half of all households in

the city had a phone and only seven per cent

had access to the internet, with the poorest

50 times less likely to have the internet

(Graham, 2002, p. 43). In other words, having

the technology does not always lead to its

take-up, nor are take-up rates always equita-

ble. Technological determinism with respect

to ICTs, through advertising and magazine

articles, suggest, argues Graham (2002, p. 35),

some ‘value-free technological panacea offer-

ing instant, limitless access to some entirely

separate and disembodied on-line world’. A

less charitable analysis might suggest that it

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HOLLANDS: WILL THE REAL SMART CITY PLEASE STAND UP? 311

offers up yet another urban form dominated

not by industrial capital this time but by tech-

nological and knowledge capital. The main

idea here is that the technological smart city

becomes a smokescreen for ushering in the

business-dominated informational city.

For example, while local governments

from around the globe all stress they are

concerned with how residents and communi-

ties utilize the new technologies, their

‘bottom line’ economic imperative appears to

be to attract capital, particularly knowledge

and informational capital to their city. For

example, despite the fact that much of

Ottawa’s economy is derived from govern-

ment sources, even it acknowledges that

‘…individual companies drive a city’s pros-

perity’ (City of Ottawa, 2006). In San

Diego’s General Plan for the city they state:

‘Economic prosperity is a key component of

quality of life. The structure of the City of

San Diego’s economy influences the City’s

physical development and determines the

City’s capacity to fund essential services’

(City of San Diego, 2007). And yet, while

much of rhetoric about business and capital

in the smart city is linked to small scale IT

companies and providing local employment

opportunities, the fact of the matter is that

huge chunks of this industry are controlled

and dominated by multi-national firms

which are highly mobile (Shiller, 1999).

The history of Singapore’s IT revolution is

a good example of the ideological shifts smart

cities can undergo. It has been suggested that

such a revolution unfolded in three phases

(Wei Choo, 1997). First, a public sector

funded IT initiative from 1981–85 to comput-

erize government ministries, improve public

services and produce a good stock of

computer experts. Second, a shift from the

public to private sector through the National

Technology Plan (1985–90) designed to

‘…develop a strong export-oriented IT indus-

try and to improve business productivity

through IT’ (Wei Choo, 1997, p. 48). And

finally a third phase begun in 1991 entitled the

IT2000 masterplan in which the city/state was

to be transformed into an ‘intelligent island’,

where IT permeates every aspect of the soci-

ety—home, work, and play. The stated goals

of the masterplan are to enhance national

competitiveness and to improve the quality of

life of citizens (Wei Choo, 1997, p. 49). What

is interesting about this example is first the

financial shift from the public to the private

sector and second, a more ideological shift

towards merging business competitiveness

with social well-being.

The ‘ideological turn’ expressed here, has an

effect on the development of the urban form,

as cites can be seen increasingly to serve global

mobile IT businesses as opposed to looking

after stationary ordinary citizens (Amin et al.,

2000). As Graham and Marvin (2001) put it,

the diffusion of information technology

across cities is actually having an effect which

can only be described as ‘splintering urban-

ism’—a fragmentation and polarization of

whole urban regions, both economically and

socially. While the effects are numerous,

Graham (2002) provides a host of examples

such as the targeting of particular information

technology services to ‘high end’ wealthy

customers and the creation of fortified high-

tech enclaves in places like Sao Paulo, Kuala

Lumpur, Bangalore and Singapore, as well as

the development of gentrified urban neigh-

bourhoods to house smart workers, such as in

San Francisco.

This latter point leads to a further critique

of smart cities along similar lines to that of

the creative city (i.e. see Peck, 2005). While

the creative city envisioned by Florida (2005)

consists of trying to recruit and retain the

‘creative classes’ generally (see Florida, 2002),

the idea of the smart city is to presumably

attract and cater for smart workers. One of

the inevitable by-products of either urban

form, by definition, is social polarization

(Harvey, 2000). For instance, despite being a

relatively rich country, aided partly through

its advanced technological infrastructure,

Singapore’s poverty level is estimated to be in

the region of 25–30 per cent of the popula-

tion. Perhaps even more telling is that during

the height of its information technology

boom, the city/country became even more

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312 CITY VOL. 12, NO. 3

polarized. In 1990 the richest 10 per cent of

households earned 15.6 times more than the

poorest 10 per cent, but by 2000, the gap

widened further with the richest earning 36

times more than the poorest (Singapore

Democratic Party, nd). Similarly, poverty

rates in San Diego, despite it having relatively

high labour force participation rates and low

levels of unemployment over the past decade,

have actually risen during their so-called

high-tech boom, suggesting that rhetoric

about the digital revolution reaching every-

one is wildly optimistic. For example, child

poverty rates (under 18 years of age) in the

city actually increased from 1990 to 2002

from 15.6 per cent to 17.5 per cent (City of

San Diego, 2007).

The smart/creative city can become not

only more economically polarized, but also

socially, culturally and spatially divided by

the growing contrast between incoming

knowledge and creative workers, and the

unskilled and IT illiterate sections of the local

poorer population (Peck, 2005; Smith, 1996).

Urban gentrification in this regard, refers not

just to housing and neighbourhoods as it once

did (see Butler, 1997), but increasingly to

consumption, lifestyle and leisure in the city

(see Chatterton and Hollands, 2002). Chatter-

ton and Hollands (2003), for example, have

studied the gentrification and social polariza-

tion of UK nightlife, tracing it back to changes

in the urban economy, including the impact of

IT and service employment on cities. For

instance, the transformation of the UK city of

Leeds from a manufacturing city to a service-

based urban form, has resulted in the creation

of a range of up-market bars and nightclubs,

which work to exclude whole sections of the

local population (Hollands and Chatterton,

2004). The impact of the gentrified smart/

creative city then goes far beyond creating

inequalities of work, housing and neighbour-

hood, and extends to areas such as inequitable

city space (Byrne, 1999) and entertainment

provision (Chatterton and Hollands, 2003).

Despite representations in smart city

discourses about the importance of local

communities and social learning, an overall

emphases on business-driven technology and

gentrification could be interpreted to imply

that this urban form is relatively unconcerned

with class inequality (i.e. particularly the un-

creative classes, see Peck, 2005), inclusion

(Byrne, 1999), and social justice (Harvey,

1973). Even the more humanist rationale of

the smart/creative city is predicated on

attracting educated people by providing a

creative infrastructure of work, community

and leisure (Florida, 2002). Edmonton’s smart

city approach here is to offer ‘an exceptional

arts and entertainment scene’ (City of

Edmonton, 2006), presumably mostly for the

middle classes. Eger (2003a, p. 14) quoting the

National Governor’s Association in the US,

states that arts programmes contribute ‘…to a

region’s ‘innovation habitat’, thus improving

quality of life—making it more attractive to

the highly desirable knowledge-based

employees…’ (my emphasis). The issue here is

how does this provision relate to the ‘less’

smart/creative sections of the local popula-

tion? What can the smart city offer them?

And what impact does catering for knowl-

edge-based employees have on arts provisions

for the less well off? So while smart cities may

fly the banner of creativity, diversity, toler-

ance and culture, the balance appears to be

tipped towards appealing to knowledge and

creative workers, rather than using IT and arts

to promote social inclusion (Solnit and

Schwartzenberg, 2000; Sibley, 1995).

Part of the response to this dilemma lies in

some of the discussion surrounding smart

communities in North America (Coe et al.,

2000) or various inclusion measures through

ICTs in the USA (Phipps, 2000) and the UK

(Talbot and Newman, 1998). While many of

these measures appear progressive and there

are numerous examples of ‘successful’ partic-

ipatory IT projects, looked at more critically,

many of these programmes could be viewed

as neo-liberal attempts to incorporate the

local community into the entrepreneurial

city (Harvey, 1989). Notions of smart

communities and the importance of social

learning/social capital, in this view, seem less

progressive and more ideological. Education

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HOLLANDS: WILL THE REAL SMART CITY PLEASE STAND UP? 313

within capitalism has always been necessary

to reproduce the workforce. In this instance,

it has simply been re-oriented towards the

new information economy, primarily

through training local people to serve the

needs of the new creative and informational

classes (Peck, 2005). The irony is that many

such social learning and training

programmes, often funded by national and

local government money, may actually work

to subsidize the training needs and require-

ments of multinational companies which

cities hope to lure to town (Harvey, 2000).

The emphasis of smart cities looked at in this

light, shifts from discourses about inclusion

and human capital to more of a ‘culture of

contentment’ idea (Galbraith, 1993), with

unskilled local labour servicing the leisure

and lifestyle needs of the new incoming

knowledge and creative workers.

Finally, what can one make of those self-

designated smart cities which emphasise

environmental sustainability as their smart

feature? The key question here is to what

extent are economic growth and environmen-

tal sustainability compatible (Gleeson and

Low, 2000), and is the information city auto-

matically all that eco-friendly? As Graham

(2002, p. 34) perceptively points out, despite

notions that ICT work can potentially

conquer space through increased ‘home-

working’, this practice is relatively rare,

hence information workers still have to get to

the office. Therefore, at least two of the

outcomes created by urban ITC clusters—

transport and car parking space—are not

particularly environmentally friendly

(Newman and Kenworthy, 1999). Addition-

ally, the information technology revolution is

perhaps not as clean as it initially appears.

Researchers at the UN university in Tokyo,

for example, have estimated that the produc-

tion of a new computer demands ten times its

weight in fossil fuels and chemicals, as

opposed to two times for the production of

an automobile, and in the future the world

could face a computer ‘waste mountain’ as

people constantly upgrade their technology

(Sample, 2004, p. 2).

Brisbane, Australia is a useful example of

some the contradictions between smart cities

being committed to economic growth and

the environment, simultaneously. For exam-

ple, the city has utilized the smart label in

conjunction with notions of the ‘sustainable

city’ with regard to a unique water recycling

programme (Local Government Focus,

2004). Yet as the city website makes explicit:

‘Brisbane is a great place to do business. It

has low taxes and charges, excellent infra-

structure, great support networks and a

forward thinking local administration to

support you in your business venture’

(Brisbane City Council, 2005). The key ques-

tion is what happens when there are not

enough resources to cater for both of these

things? Or what happens when the focus on

environmental sustainability itself begins to

be seen as a new branch of capitalistic oppor-

tunity? For example, Smart-Cities.net is a

web-portal site which currently promotes

urban sustainable development by providing

a platform for information exchange and

interaction between Asian Cities and Euro-

pean environmental solution providers

(Smart Cities.net, 2002). While its focus on

urban environmental challenges is laudable,

its website might also be ‘read’ as a future

stepping stone for ecological business oppor-

tunities. The question is can cities accord the

same priority to all aspects of the smart city

agenda, or do some elements automatically

take precedence over others? (i.e. business

needs over environmental ones, see Gleeson

and Low, 2000; Inoguchi et al., 1999).

Underneath the rather self-congratulatory

surface of self-designated smart cities are

some unspoken assumptions and continuing

urban problems. Issues concerning the splin-

tering effects of the informational city, the

limits of urban entrepreneurialism, problems

created by the creative classes for local

communities, including deepening social

inequality and urban gentrification, not to

mention the conflict between environment

sustainability and economic growth, loom in

the background behind the smart city label.

The conclusion picks up on some of these

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314 CITY VOL. 12, NO. 3

issues and discusses how the smart city

discourse might be moved in more progres-

sive directions.

Conclusion: towards more ‘progressive’

smart cities?

This paper began with a critical interrogation

of the concept of smart (intelligent) cities,

and through an analysis of a range of (self)

designated examples has subjected the idea to

a polemical critique. Many cities from

around the globe have been keen to adopt the

smart city mantle and emphasize its more

acceptable face for self-promotional

purposes. In addition to assuming there is an

automatically positive impact of IT on the

urban form, the smart city label can also be

said to assume a rather harmonious high-tech

future. However, it might be argued that

beneath the emphases on human capital,

social learning and the creation of smart

communities, lay a more limited political

agenda of ‘high-tech urban entrepreneurial-

ism’. Analyses of some designated smart

cities here reveal examples of prioritizing

informational business interests and hiding

growing social polarization (Harvey, 2000),

features more reminiscent of the ‘entrepre-

neurial city’ (Jessop, 1997), and ‘neo-liberal’

urbanism more generally (Peck and Tickell,

2002). Of course this assertion requires

further study and in-depth analyses of

specific urban cases. All cities differ some-

what in their history, economic and political

makeup, and cultural legacy. They are also

influenced by national boundaries and indig-

enous government policies and laws.6

However, the apparent ascendance of the

entrepreneurial city (Quilley, 2000; Harvey,

1989) and its high-tech variant (i.e. the smart

city), belies a set of underlying shortcomings

and contradictions.

First, is the urban problematic revealed by

Harvey’s theoretical notion of the global

‘spatial fix’. As Harvey (1989) argues, capital-

ist investment in urban infrastructure, while

necessary, is no guarantee to further capital

accumulation. And while such investment

may temporarily act to boost an area’s profile

and create employment, it can also mean a

diversion of public (welfare) resources to

help lure in mobile global capital thereby

creating social polarization. Furthermore, the

‘spatial fix’ inevitably means that mobile

capital can often ‘write its own deals’ to come

to town, only to move on when it receives a

better deal elsewhere. This is no less true for

the smart city than it was for the industrial,

manufacturing city. Investment in ICTs,

human capital, social learning and smart

communities, while seemingly laudable aims

for any city or urban region wanting to

regenerate, also holds no guarantees. Public–

private partnerships and investment in these

areas may in fact backfire, as information

technology capital may flow elsewhere

depending on what advantages are available

to aid further capital accumulation. Perhaps

one of the best illustrations of this process

concerns the city of Ottawa and its boom-

bust cycle of high-tech industries. While the

Canadian government has pored some C$6.4

billion into the Technology Partnerships

Canada program (effectively loans to multi-

national companies), it is expected that only

about a third of that money will have been

repaid by 2020, which is in effect a public

subsidy (Aubry, 2002). At the same time, it is

now felt by some that the city is losing

control of its high-tech industry, reverting to

its former role as a technology research and

development site servicing multinationals

based elsewhere (Bagnell, 2003; Hill, 2002).

Additionally, as the previous analysis

shows, self-designated smart cities face the

interminable difficulty of how to deal with

the issue of widening inequality and social

polarization, a problem brought on partly by

its own ‘success’ so to speak. Rather than rais-

ing standards of living for all urban dweller,

information technology has been shown to

deepen social divisions in cities (Graham,

2002). The attraction of educated, mobile,

middle class professionals and IT workers

(part of the ‘creative classes’, Florida, 2002),

can result in the production of highly

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HOLLANDS: WILL THE REAL SMART CITY PLEASE STAND UP? 315

gentrified neighbourhoods and leisure/enter-

tainment provision, thereby excluding

traditional communities and poorer residents.

Furthermore, it is often understated that

smart cities requires a sizable secondary

workforce needed to service the entertain-

ment and leisure needs of professionals and

information workers (Peck, 2005), thereby

contributing to entrenched labour market

inequalities. So while much of the smart city

discourse gives emphases to the creation of

smart communities and the raising of every-

one’s access to urban information technol-

ogy, education and governance, ironically it

can actually contribute to the two speed or

‘dual city’. The dominance of the entrepre-

neurial version of smart cities does not of

course preclude the existence of different

smart urban forms or examples, or the future

development more progressive models. The

remainder of the conclusion briefly explores

what aspects a more progressive smart city

might strive for.

First and foremost, progressive smart cities

must seriously start with people and the

human capital side of the equation, rather

than blindly believing that IT itself can auto-

matically transform and improve cities. To

some extend this is already recognized (see

Eger, 2003b). As Paquet (2001, p. 29) has

argued regarding the creation of smart

communities, ‘The critical factor in any

successful community has to be its people

and how they interact’. The important aspect

of information technology is not its capacity

to automatically create smart communities,

but its adaptability to be utilized socially in

ways that empower and educate people, and

get them involved in a political debate about

their own lives and the urban environment

that they inhabit. As Raymond Williams

(1983) always reminded us, while technology

(of any kind) is never neutral, it has the

potential and capacity to be used socially and

politically for quite different purposes. In

this vein, perhaps some of the best instances

of where ICTs have been utilized most

progressively would be the development of

community telecentres, particularly those

ones that attempt to link up information

technology to socially marginalized groups

(see Graham, 2002, p. 50). While there are

numerous world-wide examples to draw

upon (see Phipps, 2000; Talbot and Newman,

1998), perhaps one of the most revealing

cases concerns Rathgeber’s (2002) study of

community telecentres in Africa to help

women, in particular, to enhance their job

prospects and opportunities. The most telling

aspect of this research was that because initial

attempts to set up such telecentres were

‘technological’ (about hardware/software)

and business-led, rather than social and

people-led, they were largely ineffective and

inaccessible, and hence failed. Rathgeber’s

(2002) study showed that such centres were

seen rather as a social resource by the target

group of African women to help run their

daily lives, rather than as a technological/

economic resource. This specific example

demonstrates the pressing need to start with

people’s existing knowledges and skills, not

with technology per se.

Second, the progressive smart city needs to

create a real shift in the balance of power

between the use of information technology

by business, government, communities and

ordinary people who live in cities (Amin

et al., 2000), as well as seek to balance

economic growth with sustainability. As Coe

et al. (2000, p. 13) argue, while the emphasis

on smart cities is very much about economic

growth, and competitiveness in the global

knowledge economy, smart communities can

also ‘…provide an opportunity for enhancing

citizen participation in and influence over

local decision making’. In a word, the ‘real’

smart city might use IT to enhance demo-

cratic debates about the kind of city it wants

to be and what kind of city people want to

live in - a type of virtual ‘public culture’, to

redefine a term from Sharon Zukin (1995).

Zukin basically defines public culture as

where all possible interests and priorities of a

whole range of citizens are placed on the

agenda and discussed and debated. While IT

might make the conditions for developing a

‘virtual public culture’ possible, there must

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316 CITY VOL. 12, NO. 3

be the political will to make this happen and

the digital divide must be addressed.

Such shifts, would involve the progressive

smart city addressing issues of power and

inequality in the city (Harvey, 2000), as well

as begin to seriously respect diversity and build

a democratic urban pluralism (Sandercock,

1998). Part of the difficulty here undoubtedly

concerns how one understands and comes to

term with the variety of inequalities that exist

in cities (Keith and Pile, 1993; Fincher and

Jabobs, 1998; Harvey, 1989). One thing that is

patently clear however, is the degree to which

cities have become more unequal through IT

(Graham, 2002), the processes of globalization

(Harvey, 2000), changes in urban labour

markets (Peck, 2005), and increased gentrifi-

cation (Smith, 1996). While the smart entre-

preneurial city ‘successfully’ caters for the rich,

mobile, creative businessman, through the

creation of corporate informational portals

and services, not to mention through luxury

hotels, restaurant, bars and global business

transport links, by definition, it also simulta-

neously ignores the welfare needs of its poorer

residents (Graham, 2002; Byrne, 1999). And

while these economic hierarchies are not in

dispute, urban feminists and multicultural

theorists argue that they differentially impact

on gendered and ethnic populations. For

example, while the entrepreneurial smart city

might cater for the small number of profes-

sional and creative females working in the IT

sector, the majority of working women are left

to service the largely male business city—wait-

ing on, cleaning and servicing its dominant

male make-up (Jarvis, 2005). Furthermore,

according to theorists like Sandercock (2003),

our urban ethic minorities and migrants are

simultaneously feared, ignored or exploited,

rather than viewed as a social and cultural

resource. Finally, the talents of many young

people in cities are wasted under the rubric of

a social problem discourse, rather than seen

through the lens of cultural creativity (see

Chatterton and Hollands, 2003) while many

alternative political groups such as environ-

mentalists, squatters, third sector groups

and co-operatives and/or urban political

movements such as ‘reclaim the streets’ and

‘critical mass’ go un-noticed or are seen as

public nuisances (Chatterton, 2000).

In essence the smart progressive city needs

and requires the input and contribution of

these various groups of people, and cannot

simply be labelled as smart by adopting a

sophisticated information technology infra-

structure or through creating self-promo-

tional websites. Cities are more than just

wires and cables, smart offices, trendy bars

and luxury hotels, and the vast number of

people who live in cities deserve more than

just these things. Because the smart city label

can work to ideologically mask the nature of

some of the underlying changes in cities, it

may be a partial impediment toward

progressive urban change. Real smart cities

will actually have to take much greater risks

with technology, devolve power, tackle

inequalities and redefine what they mean by

smart itself, if they want to retain such a

lofty title.

Notes

1

1 While the discourse of smart cities has certain

parallels with that of the creative city, and hence is

open to similar criticism (see Peck, 2005), it is

distinguished by its particular focus on information

and communication technologies as the driving

force in urban transformation (Eger, 1997), rather

than creativity in a more general sense (see Florida,

2002; 2005). However, as I shall go on to argue

there are selective borrowings in some of the smart

city discourses regarding the role IT increasingly

plays in the arts, culture and media (see Eger,

2003a).

2

2 As such, I would liken the aim of this paper to

Peck’s (2005) critique of Florida’s (2005; 2002)

work on the creative city, albeit it is critiquing a

somewhat different literature. In other words, the

point of both articles is not to prove or disprove

the existence of the creative or smart city, but

rather to critically explore some of the assumptions

and rhetoric behind these labels as well as

examine some examples of cases where the term

is applied.

3

3 There are methods developed which claim to help

measure smartness/intelligence and innovation—

see Intelligent Community Forum (2007) which lists

the five main elements of intelligent communities

and the OECD and Eurostat (2005) Oslo Manual

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HOLLANDS: WILL THE REAL SMART CITY PLEASE STAND UP? 317

designed to provide guidelines for measuring

innovation. As this is not the purpose of this paper,

I do not really make any further reference to these

measurement criteria.

4

4 While there is clearly some overlap here between

the use of the term smart in relation to smart cities

and the smart growth agenda (particularly as they

both relate to ICTs and how these can transform

work and life in a region), the two terms should not

be completely conflated. The smart growth agenda

is a somewhat more wide-ranging urban approach,

with a strong emphasis on policy prescriptions and

problem-solving. There are also specific national

variations, such as the smart growth agenda

emanating out of the USA (American Urban Land

Institute, 2007), which has developed in response

to specific urban problems such as sprawl, inner-

city decline and a lack of community in suburban

areas (see Smart Growth Network, 2007). Despite

these differences, I would content that smart cities

and the smart growth agenda tend to share some

similarities when it comes to emphasising the

underlying importance of IT and business-led

initiatives when solving urban problems. In this

paper I reserve the term smart cities to refer to those

urban regions which publicly label themselves as

smart, whilst focussing in on the labelling process

they adopt.

5

5 In this regard I examine a range of cities from

around the world that have been designated (either

through award or competition) or have self-

designated themselves as smart cities. In examining

this labelling process I look particularly at city

websites as this is one of their main promotional

vehicles and hence reveals what kinds of things are

emphasized and which things are hidden from

view.

6

6 It is generally recognized that North American

cities in particular have always been more shaped

by pro-business influences, so it is hardly

surprising to see smart city discourses here more

nakedly influenced by ‘neo-liberalism’ (for

example in the case of San Diego and

Edmonton). At the same time, it is clear that the

Smart Capital initiative in Ottawa Canada did

partly achieve a balance of IT initiatives that cut

across business, government and community

interests (Ottawa Centre for Research and

Innovation, 2007), hence the need for more

specific case studies. European cities, by contrast,

have historically, at least, been more welfare-

oriented in their urban policy-making and

generally been more concerned with social

inclusion, although as Harvey (1989) argues, they

too have embraced urban entrepreneurialism in

the last couple of decades (see also Quilley,

2000), and many are competing with one

another via various creative indexes (see Florida

and Tinagli, 2004). Meanwhile, political

transformations in Eastern Europe have meant

rapid change in cities such as they have made the

rather rapid transition from a socialist to an

entrepreneurial urban form (see Sykora, 1999).

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City

Taylor and FrancisCCIT_A_GN89301.sgm10.1080/City: Analysis of Urban Trends

1360-4813 (print)/1470-3629 (online)Original Article2008Taylor & Francis122000000July 2008 CONTENTS

VOLUME 12 NUMBER 3DECEMBER 2008

279 EDITORIAL BOB CATTERALL

283 BUILDING THE CARTESIAN ENLIGHTENMENT: LOS ANGELES,

HOMELESSNESS AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE KEN HILLIS

303 WILL THE REAL SMART CITY PLEASE STAND UP? INTELLIGENT,

PROGRESSIVE OR ENTREPRENEURIAL?ROBERT G. HOLLANDS

Going for gold: two perspectives on the Olympic Games

321 GLOBALIZATION, CITIES AND THE SUMMER OLYMPICS JOHN R. SHORT

341 MAPPING THE OLYMPIC GROWTH MACHINE: TRANSNATIONAL

URBANISM AND THE GROWTH MACHINE DIASPORA BJÖRN SURBORG, ROB

VANWYNSBERGHE AND

ELVIN WYLY

356 DIFFERENT BUT THE SAME? POST-WAR SLUM CLEARANCE AND

CONTEMPORARY REGENERATION IN BIRMINGHAM, UK PHIL JONES

372 ‘THE POST-CITY BEING PREPARED ON THE SITE OF THE EX-CITY’:

RE-ALIGNING THE PROVINCIAL CITY ALONG THE M62 IN THE

NORTH OF ENGLAND DARYL MARTIN

Scenes and Sounds

383 INTRODUCTION PAULA LÖKMAN

384 PHOTOGRAPHING PEOPLE IS WRONG: WITH A CAMERA IN

KOLKATA ARIADNE VAN DE VEN

Reviews

391 CHANGING URBAN FORM, WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS

Remaking Chinese Urban Form: Modernity, Scarcity

and Space, by Duanfang Lu LAURENCE J.C. MA

394 THINKING NEOLIBERALISM, THINKING GEOGRAPHY

Contesting Neoliberalism: Urban Frontiers, edited by

Helga Leitner, Jamie Peck and Eric S. Sheppard SARASWATI RAJU

398 CAN URBANISM HEAL THE SCARS OF CONFLICT?

Cities, Nationalism, and Democratization,

by Scott A. Bollens NASSER YASSIN

402 ENDPIECE BOB CATTERALL

IS IT ALL COMING TOGETHER? THOUGHTS ON URBAN STUDIES

AND THE PRESENT CRISIS: (14) ANOTHER CITY IS POSSIBLE?

REPORTS FROM THE FRONTLINE

416 INDEX, VOLUME 12 2008

Downloaded By: [University of Newcastle upon Tyne] At: 14:00 28 January 2009

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Leonie Sandercock

Academic Capitalism and the New Economy

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Bob Surname

The Cultural Economy of Cities: Essays on the Geography of Image-Producing Industries

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Allen J Scott

The Earthscan Reader in Sustainable Cities

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David Satterthwaite

Geographies of Exclusion

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David Sibley

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Nicos Komninos

Theories of the Information Society

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Richard Florida

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January 2022

Alan Reeve

This collection critiques the rhetoric of ‘smart cities’. It seeks to engender a timely debate about what future cities might look like and what their concerns should be. Using a multi-disciplinary perspective, it features acclaimed scholars whose work investigates the proposed networked digital technologies that ostensibly affect planning policies, control infrastructures and deliver and manage ... [Show full abstract] city services and systems. The contributors offer insights into how future cities might be envisaged, planned and executed in order to be more ‘equal’.

Chapter

Co-Creating Place and Creativity Through Media Architecture: The InstaBooth

January 2022

Glenda Caldwell

This collection critiques the rhetoric of ‘smart cities’. It seeks to engender a timely debate about what future cities might look like and what their concerns should be. Using a multi-disciplinary perspective, it features acclaimed scholars whose work investigates the proposed networked digital technologies that ostensibly affect planning policies, control infrastructures and deliver and manage ... [Show full abstract] city services and systems. The contributors offer insights into how future cities might be envisaged, planned and executed in order to be more ‘equal’.

Chapter

If (Equality)

January 2022

Delfina Fantini van Ditmar

This collection critiques the rhetoric of ‘smart cities’. It seeks to engender a timely debate about what future cities might look like and what their concerns should be. Using a multi-disciplinary perspective, it features acclaimed scholars whose work investigates the proposed networked digital technologies that ostensibly affect planning policies, control infrastructures and deliver and manage ... [Show full abstract] city services and systems. The contributors offer insights into how future cities might be envisaged, planned and executed in order to be more ‘equal’.

Chapter

Universities, Equality and the Neo-Liberal City

January 2022

Richard Hayes

This collection critiques the rhetoric of ‘smart cities’. It seeks to engender a timely debate about what future cities might look like and what their concerns should be. Using a multi-disciplinary perspective, it features acclaimed scholars whose work investigates the proposed networked digital technologies that ostensibly affect planning policies, control infrastructures and deliver and manage ... [Show full abstract] city services and systems. The contributors offer insights into how future cities might be envisaged, planned and executed in order to be more ‘equal’.

Last Updated: 22 Oct 2024