Author Archives: Paolo Cardullo

New paper published “Smart urbanism and smart citizenship”

Paolo Cardullo and Rob Kitchin have published a new paper in Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. “Smart urbanism and smart citizenship: The neoliberal logic of ‘citizen-focused’ smart cities in Europe” https://doi.org/10.1177/0263774X18806508

Abstract
This paper examines the neoliberal ideals that underpin participation and citizenship in the smart city and their replication mechanisms at the European level, particularly focusing on the work of the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities. The research consisted of three levels of data generation and analysis: a discourse analysis of policy documents and project descriptions of the 61 Commitments in the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities ‘citizen-focus’ cluster; interviews with a dozen stakeholders working on citizen engagement in a small sample of European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities flagship projects; and twenty interviews with city officers and corporate exhibitors at the 2017 Smart City Expo and World Congress. We contend that smart cities as currently conceived enact a blueprint of neoliberal urbanism and promote a form of neoliberal citizenship. Supra-national institutions like the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities act at a multi-scalar level, connecting diverse forms of neoliberal urbanism whilst promoting policy agendas and projects that perform neoliberal citizenship in the spaces of the everyday. Despite attempts to recast the smart city as ‘citizen-focused’, smart urbanism remains rooted in pragmatic, instrumental and paternalistic discourses and practices rather than those of social rights, political citizenship, and the common good. In our view, if smart cities are to become truly ‘citizen-focused’, an alternative conception of smart citizenship needs to be deployed, one that enables an effective shift of power and is rooted in the right to the city, entitlements, community, participation, commons, and ideals beyond the market.

New working paper: Smart approach to the commons? A case for a public Internet infrastructure

Paolo Cardullo has published a new Programmable City working paper (No. 40) via OSF: Smart approach to the commons? A case for a public Internet infrastructure. DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/4XKCA

Many thanks to Rob Kitchin and Cesare di Feliciantonio for their editing suggestions and comments, and to the attendees of the ‘After the smart city? The state of critical scholarship ten years on’ sessions at the Association of American Geographers meeting in New Orleans, April 2018, for their useful observations.

Abstract – The paper advances some critical reflections, and contributes to the debate, around commons and commoning in the smart city. It suggests that so-called ‘smart commons’ – that is, forms of ownership of data and digital infrastructure increasingly central to the discourse around appropriation and co-production of smart technologies – tend to focus more on the outcome (open data or free software) rather than the process which maintains and reproduces such commons. Thus, the paper makes a positional argument for a ‘smart approach’ to the commons, advocating for a central role for the public as a stakeholder in nurturing and maintaining urban commons in the smart city. The argument is illustrated through three brief case studies which reflect on instances of commons and commoning in relation to the implementation of public Internet infrastructure.

Key words: Smart City; Public Internet; Smart Commons; Commoning

New paper: Smart urbanism and smart citizenship: The neoliberal logic of ‘citizen-focused’ smart cities in Europe.

Paolo Cardullo and Rob Kitchin have a new working paper (no. 39), Smart urbanism and smart citizenship: The neoliberal logic of ‘citizen-focused’ smart cities in Europe. Available on SocArXiv via Open Science Framework.

Abstract. This paper examines the neoliberal ideals that underpin participation and citizenship in the smart city and their replication mechanisms at European level. We examine self-proclaimed ‘citizen-focus’ projects funded by or aligned to the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC) by way of analysing policy documents and interviews with key stakeholders of smart city initiatives at European level and the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona (SCEWC 2017). We suggest that smart cities as currently conceived enact a blueprint of neoliberal urbanism and promote a form of neoliberal citizenship. Supra-national institutions like the EIP-SCC act at a multi-scalar level, connecting diverse forms of neoliberal urbanism while promoting policy agendas and projects that perform neoliberal citizenship in the spaces of the everyday. Despite attempts to recast the smart city as ‘citizen-focused’, smart urbanism remains rooted in pragmatic, instrumental and paternalistic discourses and practices rather than those of social rights, political citizenship, and the common good. In our view, if smart cities are to become truly ‘citizen-focused’ an alternative conception of smart citizenship needs to be deployed, one that enables an effective shift of power and is rooted in rights, entitlements, community, participation, commons, and ideals beyond the market.

Paper DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/XUGB5

License: CC-By Attribution 4.0 International