Urban Digital Infrastructure, Smart Cityism, and Communication

Abstract

This article takes stock of the smart city concept by locating it in relation to both a longer history of urban computing, as well as more recent projects exploring the vexed issues of participatory urbanism, data ethics and urban surveillance. The author argues for the need to decouple thinking regarding the potential of urban digital infrastructure from the narrow and often technocentric discourse of ‘smart cityism'. Such a decoupling will require continued experimentation with both practical models and conceptual frameworks, but will offer the best opportunity for the ongoing digitization of cities to deliver on claims of ‘empowering' urban inhabitants.