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Smart City as a Mobile Technology: Critical Perspectives on Urban Development Policies

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Transforming City Governments for Successful Smart Cities

Part of the book series: Public Administration and Information Technology ((PAIT,volume 8))

Abstract

This chapter aims at providing a critical reflection about the relation between smart city and neoliberal urban governance. In the current economic scenario of crisis and austerity, smart city policy is representing an attempt to attract and coopt private actors in the provision of urban services, opening new critical issues on urban neoliberalism and welfare. The hypothesis is that the smart city policy may be interpreted as a mobile technology (recalling Aihwa Ong’s definition) of governance circulating in cities across Europe. As a consequence of neoliberalism and economic crisis, local governments are more and more in charge of providing urban services, whereas the smart city paradigm is offering new areas of economic profitability for private companies promoting technological solutions. This process implies the development of new urban governance, where the smart city policy offers technological solutions, political responses and moral justifications that are socially and politically quite pervasive. According to this perspective, there is a great need for critical and global analysis, questioning the appropriateness of any smart city project in the context of its application.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://smartercitieschallenge.org/scc/executive_reports/SCC-Copenhagen-Report.pdf (accessed June 2014)

  2. 2.

    http://amsterdamsmartcity.com (accessed June 2014)

  3. 3.

    http://www.smartcityexpo.com (accessed April 2014); see also http://www.wired.com/2011/02/st_riogondola (accessed April 2014).

  4. 4.

    Communication from the Commission ‘Smart Cities and Communities—European Innovation Partnership’, COM(2012)4701 http://ec.europa.eu/eip/smartcities/ (accessed January 2014).

  5. 5.

    United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population 2012: Wallchart, www.unpopulation.org (Accessed January 2014).

  6. 6.

    http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/ec/00100-r1.en0.htm (Accessed January 2014).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Interuniversity Department of Regional & Urban Studies and Planning, Politecnico di Torino and Università di Torino, Torino, Italy

    Patrizia Lombardi

  2. Dipartimento Culture, Politica e Società, Università di Torino, Eu-Polis, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy

    Alberto Vanolo

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  1. Patrizia Lombardi
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  2. Alberto Vanolo
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Correspondence to Patrizia Lombardi .

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  1. Department of Accounting and Finance Faculty of Business Studies, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Manuel Pedro Rodríguez-Bolívar

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Lombardi, P., Vanolo, A. (2015). Smart City as a Mobile Technology: Critical Perspectives on Urban Development Policies. In: Rodríguez-Bolívar, M. (eds) Transforming City Governments for Successful Smart Cities. Public Administration and Information Technology, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03167-5_8

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