The Ethics of Smart City Planning: Examining Post-Utilitarianism in Malaysian Blueprints

Abstract

The ethics of technology-or data-driven smart city development is facing criticism for being oriented toward the data deterministic and containing instrumental rationality and realist epistemology assumptions. Allegedly, therefore, it is willfully ignoring data privacy and rights, citizen autonomy, and deontology. Such ethics of utilitarianism are hegemonic; the majority of leaders agree with these ethics but have displayed less concern for post-utilitarianism-humanistic issues. Thus, taking the cases of the Malaysian Shared Prosperity Vision (SPV) 2030 and three other administrative levels of smart city blueprints, this article aims to examine the degree of utilitarianism involved, compared to post-utilitarianism ethics. Keyword occurrence and co-occurrence analyses were applied in this study. The findings reveal that the ethics of utilitarianism is pervasively demonstrated in top-down policies that follow the principle of maximum good for the majority of citizens, and that prioritize technology and instant utility while subjugating potentially harmful future humanistic issues. Post-utilitarianism values only appeared minimally and discursively in all the local level blueprints except the SPV. The authors argue that the ‘lost in translation’ post-utilitarianism aspects should be examined within a practical ethical framework in the local smart city planning context. The ethics of the ‘common good for all’ should not necessitate sacrificing the inclusivity of minority groups, citizen autonomy and obligation, and potential future data privacy and/or security infringements.