Inside Smart Cities

Description

The era of the smart city has arrived. Only a decade ago, the promise of optimising urban services through the widespread application of information and communication technologies was largely a techno-utopian fantasy. Today, smart urbanisation is occurring via urban projects, policies and visions in hundreds of cities around the globe. Inside Smart Cities provides real-world evidence on how local authorities, small and medium enterprises, corporations, utility providers and civil society groups are creating smart cities at the neighbourhood, city and regional scales. Twenty three empirically detailed case studies from the Global North and South – ranging from Cape Town, Stockholm and Abu Dhabi to Philadelphia, Hong Kong and Santiago – illustrate the multiple and diverse incarnations of smart urbanism. The contributors draw on ideas from urban studies, geography, urban planning, science and technology studies and innovation studies to go beyond the rhetoric of technological innovation and reveal the political, social and physical implications of digitalising the built environment. Collectively, the practices of smart urbanism raise fundamental questions about the sustainability, liveability and resilience of cities in the future. The findings are relevant to academics, students, practitioners and urban stakeholders who are questioning how urban innovation relates to politics and place. Cover......Page 1 Half Title......Page 2 Title Page......Page 4 Copyright Page......Page 5 Contents......Page 6 List of figures......Page 9 List of tables......Page 11 Notes on contributors......Page 12 Foreword......Page 17 1 Introduction: situating smart cities......Page 20 PART 1 Grounding and contextualising......Page 32 2 Realising smart cities: partnerships and economic development in the emergence and practices of smart in Newcastle, Australia......Page 34 3 Dissecting the Frankenstein city: an examination of smart urbanism in Hong Kong......Page 49 4 Ordinary Chinese smart cities: the case of Wuhan......Page 64 5 The free zone and smart-global urbanisation in Philadelphia......Page 84 PART 2 Integrating and aligning......Page 102 6 Actually existing Smart Dublin: exploring smart city development in history and context......Page 104 7 Smart cities as strategic actors: insights from EU Lighthouse projects in Stavanger, Stockholm and Nottingham......Page 121 8 Smart goes green: digitalising environmental agendas in Bristol and Manchester......Page 136 9 Smart urbanism and the visibility and reconfiguration of infrastructure and public action in the French cities of Issy-les-Moulineaux and Nice......Page 152 10 The transnational smart city as urban eco-modernisation: the case of Masdar City in Abu Dhabi......Page 168 PART 3 Contradicting and challenging......Page 182 11 Acknowledging the idiot in the smart city: experimentation and citizenship in the making of a low-carbon district in Santiago de Chile......Page 184 12 A smart equivocation: co-laboration and subsidiarity in a smart city consortium......Page 201 13 Parramatta Smart City and the quest to build Australia’s next great city......Page 216 14 From participation to start-up urbanisation? Re-situating open data in Lisbon......Page 230 PART 4 Experiencing and encountering......Page 246 15 Barcelona: from corporate smart city to technological sovereignty......Page 248 16 Smart innovation at the margins: learning from Cape Town and Kibera......Page 262 17 Innovating for an ageing society: insights from two Japanese smart cities......Page 277 18 Life in smart Seoul: the female factor......Page 294 19 Conclusions: the long and unsettled future of smart cities......Page 310 Index......Page 318