Tag Archives: smart cities

CFP: Smart City, Neighbourhood Change and Spatial Inequality

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Call for Papers: Smart City, Neighbourhood Change and Spatial Inequality

35th International Geographical Congress, 24-30 August, Dublin, Ireland

Session Organisers: Mary Kazemi and Rob Kitchin

Smart cities have gained significant attention over the last decade in the rapidly digitalizing world. Although the concept of the smart city promises a utopian perspective of urban living, where using cutting-edge technologies, geospatial data, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and artificial intelligence (AI) improve the quality of life of all citizens, in practice the benefits of these technologies are distributed unevenly among different groups of citizens vis-à-vis their socioeconomic status or geographic location.

Spatial inequality within smart cities manifests in various ways. For instance, implementing smart city initiatives in a neighbourhood attracts investments and professionals, which increases property values and improves amenities and services. Disparities in access to digital infrastructure and services usually reinforce existing spatial inequalities and trigger gentrification. Such disparities raise questions about the right to the smart city and what actions policy makers, urban planners, technology developers, and researchers do to be more sensitive to the potential negative impacts of smart city endeavours.

This session will focus on the neighbourhood effects of smart city developments, their potential role in reproducing spatial inequalities, and how a more just and emancipatory smart city might be created. We are seeking contributions that explore the following or related topics:

  • Smart city spatial effects
  • Neighborhood change
  • Gentrification
  • Spatial inequality
  • Data-driven planning/decision making
  • Digital divide
  • Algorithmic government
  • Smart city and real estate market
  • Policy responses
  • Citizen-centric smart cities
  • The right to the smart city

Submit your abstract through the IGC online submission system by Friday 12 January 2024. For queries email: Maryam.Kazemi.2022@mumail.ie or Rob.Kitchin@mu.ie

This session is part of the Governance Commission (C15). Instructions for abstract submission can be found at https://igc2024dublin.org/call-for-abstracts/

New paper: Conceptualising smart cities

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A new paper by Rob Kitchin titled ‘Conceptualising smart cities’ has been published in Urban Research and Practice. It consider how best to define smart cities and asks whether it is time to decentre and move beyond smart urbanism.

Kitchin, R. (2022) Conceptualising smart cities. Urban Research and Practice 15(1): 155-159. doi: 10.1080/17535069.2022.2031143

Smart city cases – reading lists

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I have been creating reading lists for case material on individual smart cities, or for countries/global regions, for one of my modules. I’m sharing as I thought they might be useful for others. If you have any suggestions to add to any section, or a set of readings relating to a city or region not included, please do add them in the comments or email them to me.

Dublin, Ireland

  • Cardullo, P. and Kitchin, R. (2019) Being a ‘citizen’ in the smart city: Up and down the scaffold of smart citizen participation in Dublin, Ireland. GeoJournal 84(1): 1-13.
  • Carvalho, L. and Otgaar, A. (2017) Dublinked (Dublin). In Carvalho, L., van der Berg, L., Galal, H. and Teunisse, P. (eds) Delivering Sustainable Competitiveness: Revisiting the Organising Capacity of Cities. Routledge, London.  pp. 41-60.
  • Coletta, C., Heaphy, L. and Kitchin, R. (2019) From the accidental to articulated smart city: The creation and work of ‘Smart Dublin’. European Urban and Regional Studies 26(4): 349–364
  • Coletta, C., Heaphy, L. and Kitchin, R. (2018) Actually-existing Smart Dublin: Exploring smart city development in history and context. In Karvonen, A., Cugurullo, F. and Caprotti, F. (eds) Inside Smart Cities: Place, Politics and Urban Innovation. Routledge. pp. 85-101.
  • Coletta, C. and Kitchin, R. (2017) Algorhythmic governance: Regulating the ‘heartbeat’ of a city using the Internet of Things. Big Data and Society 4: 1-16.
  • Heaphy, L. J. (2018, January 12). Interfaces and divisions in the Dublin Docklands ‘Smart District’. Programmable City Working Paper 37 https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/z2afc
  • Heaphy, L. and Pétercsák, R. (2018) Building smart city partnerships in the “Silicon Docks”
    In Coletta, C., Evans, L., Heaphy, L., and Kitchin, R. (eds) Creating Smart Cities. Oxon and New York: Routledge. pp. 76-89.
  • Kayanan, C. M., Eichenmüller, C. and Chambers, J. (2018). Silicon slipways and slippery slopes: techno-rationality and the reinvigoration of neoliberal logics in the Dublin Docklands. Space and Polity 22(1), 50–66.

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New paper: Progress and prospects for data-driven coordinated management and emergency response: the case of Ireland

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A new paper by Aoife Delaney and Rob Kitchin has been published in Territory, Politics, Governance examining the:

Progress and prospects for data-driven coordinated management and emergency response: the case of Ireland

doi: 10.1080/21622671.2020.1805355

Abstract

Internationally, there is a drive to make coordinated management and emergency response (CMER) more data-driven and centralized through shared data infrastructures and control centres. While there are a few well-known case examples of data-driven CMER, in general it has been partially implemented. In this paper, we highlight the importance of historical institutional and spatial context and path dependencies in shaping the development of CMERs within and across jurisdictions. We examine the progress and prospects of data-driven CMER in Ireland, with respect to the general landscape of inter-agency cooperation and with reference to a single key agency: An Garda Síochána (AGS), the Irish police force. To do so, we draw on 36 in-depth interviews with key stakeholders and a critical discourse analysis of 15 key policy/guideline documents. Our analysis reveals the ways in which embedded institutional cultures, structures and working practices, which are relatively resistant to change, have thwarted data-sharing and data-driven analysis and decision-making. These factors act as barriers to the adoption of smart-city approaches more generally, not just in Ireland but globally.

Keywords: coordinated management and emergency response (CMER); big data; smart cities; all-hazards approach.

New book: How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables

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How to run a cityRob Kitchin is a co-editor (along with Mark Graham, Shannon Mattern, and Joe Shaw) of a new book ‘How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables’ published by Meatspace Press. The book consists of 38 chapters, with all but six consisting of speculative short fiction.

Should cities be run like businesses? Should city services and infrastructure be run by businesses? For some urban commentators, policy-makers, politicians and corporate lobby groups, the answer is ‘yes’ to both questions.

Others are critical of such views, cautious about shifting the culture of city administration from management to entrepreneurship, and transforming public assets and services run for the common good into markets run for profit.

The stories and essays in How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables explore how a city might look, feel and function if the business models, practices and technologies of 38 different companies were applied to the running of cities. What would it be like to live in a city administered using the business model of Amazon (or Apple, IKEA, Pornhub, Spotify, Tinder, Uber, etc.) or a city where critical public services are delivered by these companies?

Collectively, the chapters ask us to imagine and reflect on what kind of cities we want to live in and how they should be managed and governed.

The book is available open-access. There’s also a limited print run, with artwork specially designed by Carlos Romo-Melgar and John Philip Sage.

New paper: Civic infrastructure and the appropriation of the corporate smart city

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New Progcity collaboration has been published in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers! Sung-Yueh Perng and Sophia Maalsen ask how we can make sense of the appropriation of the corporate city in the paper entitled Civic infrastructure and the appropriation of the corporate smart city.

Have a look at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24694452.2019.1674629. If you do not have institutional subscription, free copies can be downloaded from: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/NGSGJHRPDVMQX6X7YXEM/full?target=10.1080/24694452.2019.1674629

Abstract

Concerns have been raised regarding smart city innovations leading to, or consolidating, technocratic urban governance and the tokenization of citizens. Less research, however, has explored how we make sense of ongoing appropriation of the resources, skills, and expertise of corporate smart cities and what this means for future cities. In this article, we examine the summoning of political subjectivity through the practices of retrofitting, repurposing, and reinvigorating. We consider them as civic infrastructure to sensitize the infrastructural acts and conventions that are assembled for exploring inclusive and participatory ways of shaping urban futures. These practices, illustrated by examples in Adelaide, Dublin, and Boston, focus on capabilities not only to write code, access data, or design a prototype but also to devise diverse sociotechnical arrangements and power relations to disobey, question, and dissent from technocratic visions and practices. The article concludes by suggesting further examination of the summoning of political subjectivity from within established institutions to widen dissent and appropriation of the corporate smart city.

Key Words: citizen, infrastructure, political subjectivity, smart city, urban future.