Against the smart city

1. The Smart City is a Technocratic Illusion of Urban Management

"The smart city is merely the latest manifestation of a current of thought that has found expression in one way or another throughout the entire history of urban settlement."

Technological Utopia Myth. The smart city represents a simplistic, top-down approach to urban management that reduces complex human environments to data points and optimization algorithms. These technologies promise efficient, seamless urban experiences but fundamentally misunderstand the organic nature of city life.

Key Characteristics of Smart City Illusion:

• Built on "generic space" disconnected from local context
• Operates in a hypothetical future time
• Treats technological systems as universally applicable
• Ignores historical and cultural urban complexities

Conceptual Emptiness. Despite billions invested in projects like Songdo and Masdar City, these developments reveal more about technological vendors' ambitions than genuine urban innovation. They represent corporate fantasies of control rather than living, breathing urban ecosystems.

2. Technological Systems Are Not Neutral

"Every technology and every ensemble of technologies encodes a hypothesis about human behavior."

Hidden Technological Assumptions. Technologies are never objective or value-neutral. They embed specific worldviews, power structures, and behavioral expectations that shape user interactions and societal dynamics. Smart city technologies particularly reveal implicit assumptions about human agency and governance.

Technology's Embedded Biases:

• Presume centralized control is optimal
• Reduce human complexity to measurable metrics
• Prioritize efficiency over diverse human experiences
• Create systems that surveil and predict behavior

Technological Design as Political Act. The choice of what to measure, how to measure it, and who controls the measurement are inherently political decisions that determine whose perspectives and interests are centered in urban environments.

3. Smart Cities Prioritize Administrative Control Over Citizen Empowerment

"The role of the citizen in this schema is simply to generate data that can be aggregated and subjected to analytical inquiry."

Administrative Dominance. Smart city technologies are fundamentally designed to serve administrative interests, transforming citizens from active participants to passive data generators. The primary goal becomes managing populations rather than empowering them.

Control Mechanisms:

• Centralized data collection
• Predictive analytics
• Behavior modification systems
• Restricted access to raw data

Undermining Democratic Participation. By concentrating technological power in the hands of administrators and technology vendors, these systems actively diminish citizen agency, transparency, and meaningful democratic engagement.

4. Neoliberal Ideology Fundamentally Shapes Smart City Narratives

"The smart city itself, as a coherent object of discourse, arises out of a specific set of conditions produced by late capitalism."

Market-Driven Urban Design. Smart city concepts are deeply intertwined with neoliberal economic philosophies, prioritizing privatization, deregulation, and global capital mobility over local community needs.

Neoliberal Smart City Characteristics:

• Privatized urban infrastructure
• Minimal public sector involvement
• Competition-focused urban development
• Reduced taxation and regulatory oversight

Global Economic Positioning. Cities are reimagined as competitive platforms attracting global talent and investment, transforming urban spaces into marketable products rather than living communities.

5. Authoritarian Potential Lurks Within Smart City Technologies

"The smart city technologies can easily lend themselves to practices of oppression, furnishing would-be authoritarian institutions with a toolkit readymade for their purposes."

Surveillance and Control. Smart city technologies create unprecedented opportunities for monitoring, predicting, and potentially manipulating citizen behaviors, particularly in contexts with weak democratic traditions.

Technological Oppression Mechanisms:

• Biometric identification systems
• Movement tracking
• Predictive behavior analytics
• Real-time population management

Risk of Systemic Abuse. The same technologies marketed as efficiency tools can rapidly transform into instruments of social control, suppressing dissent and marginalizing vulnerable populations.

6. Urban Intelligence Resides in People, Not Technological Systems

"Cities everywhere are always already smart, and their intelligence resides in the people."

Human-Centered Urban Complexity. True urban intelligence emerges from diverse human interactions, cultural adaptations, and collective problem-solving—capabilities that cannot be replicated by algorithmic systems.

Sources of Urban Intelligence:

• Spontaneous social networks
• Informal economic systems
• Community adaptation strategies
• Cultural knowledge transmission

Technological Humility. Effective urban technologies should support and amplify existing human capabilities rather than attempting to replace or control them.

7. Existing Cities Are Complex Ecosystems That Cannot Be Algorithmically Optimized

"No: we should devise technological frameworks that support this process of self-organization rather than undermining it."

Complexity Beyond Calculation. Cities are dynamic, emergent systems with countless interdependent variables that defy simplistic computational management. Attempts to "optimize" urban processes inevitably reduce rich human experiences to sterile metrics.

Urban Complexity Dimensions:

• Unpredictable human interactions
• Cultural diversity
• Informal economic mechanisms
• Emergent social innovations

Adaptive Design Approach. Urban technologies must embrace flexibility, openness, and continuous adaptation rather than pursuing rigid, predetermined outcomes.

8. Open and Democratically Designed Technologies Offer Alternative Urban Futures

"We can have it. We can live and thrive there, if we never once lose sight of the people in whom any city's capability actually subsists."

Citizen-Centric Technology. Alternative technological approaches can prioritize transparency, participation, and collective empowerment, transforming smart city concepts from top-down control mechanisms to collaborative platforms.

Democratic Technology Principles:

• Open data access
• Participatory design processes
• Transparent algorithmic systems
• Decentralized technological governance

Technological Democracy. By democratizing technological design and implementation, cities can leverage networked technologies to enhance collective decision-making and community resilience.

9. Historical Urban Planning Failures Repeat in Smart City Designs

"Do the institutions responsible for conceiving of the smart city, or the engineers working for them, literally believe that efficiency is the sole metric by which urban processes ought to be judged?"

Recurring Modernist Mistakes. Contemporary smart city designs mirror failed 20th-century urban planning approaches, repeating historical errors of overspecification, technological determinism, and disregard for human complexity.

Parallels with High Modernist Planning:

• Blank-slate development approaches
• Functional segregation
• Technocratic governance models
• Belief in total computational control

Learning from Historical Failures. Understanding past urban planning mistakes can help develop more nuanced, human-centered technological interventions.

10. Technology Should Enhance Urban Life, Not Control It

"Our work can and should be technically sophisticated, and take every advantage offered us by emergent ways of doing and making."

Transformative Technology Vision. Instead of viewing technology as a controlling mechanism, we should see it as a collaborative tool that supports human creativity, adaptation, and collective intelligence.

Positive Technological Principles:

• Support emergent urban practices
• Amplify human capabilities
• Enhance democratic participation
• Respect local cultural contexts

Future-Oriented Approach. By reimagining technology as a supportive, adaptive framework, we can create urban environments that are both technologically advanced and deeply humane.

Last updated: December 24, 2024