New geographical frontiers
Session proposal form
Please fill in all the details below and return y 13 February 2013
Session Summary
Session Title:
Please enter session title as it should appear in the conference programme. If you have multiple timeslots with sub-titles, only enter the main title of the session here. / Smart Cities: Discourses, Policies and Technologies in the Making
Session sponsor (if applicable)
Please enter the name(s) of any Research Group(s) or other organisations sponsoring this session, to be recorded in the conference programme.
Session Abstract:
Please enter session abstract as it should appear in the online programme. / Recent urban policy debates have been influenced heavily by discourses reiterating the promises associated with ‘smart’ information technologies, in terms of optimised management-at-a-distance of urban infrastructures. One of the many terms used to subsume these developments is ‘smart cities’. Contemporary projects and efforts surrounding smart cities thus cover a large variety of systems and services, from city administration to mobility and energy management.
At their core, smart-city initiatives imply a world of optimised ordering and regulation that relies, fundamentally, on the coding of everyday life into software. Yet such processes of ordering and software sorting are never neutral, whether the collection, classification and analysis of data aim at greater efficiency, convenience or security. Furthermore, smart-city ideas and initiatives are constructed and coded in particular ways, through particular discourses, interests and exchanges of expertise across different geographical sites. Concerned with precisely this problematic – smart cities as both coded and coding –, the session aims to highlight a number of critical issues and implications arising from current smart-city initiatives.
Keywords:
Please enter keywords separated by a semi colon (;). Maximum of five keywords allowed / Smart Cities, Urban Infrastructures, Information Technologies, Surveillance, Mobile Policy
Session Convenors
Session Convenor Name / Affiliation / Email address
Ola Söderström / University of Neuchâtel /
Francisco Klauser / University of Neuchâtel /
Session Requirements
Number of timeslots required
Session timeslots are 1hr 40minutes long. A session may not normally occupy more than two timeslots in the programme, unless by negotiation with conference organisers. / 2
Type of session proposed
e.g. papers, papers with discussant, posters, panel discussion, workshop…
The session organisers welcome innovative session formats. If you would like to discuss a session format, please contact the organisers .
Read more about session formats: / Papers with Discussant
Special audio visual requirements
A laptop with audio speakers, data projector and screen will be provided in each room. Most rooms should also have internet access (either wired or wireless). Speakers should bring their own laser pointers etc.
The AC2013 conference can offer facilities for video-, audio-conferencing or Skype for a limited number of sessions – please make your request here.
Expected audience
Please provide an estimate of audience size. This will help to allocate rooms. / 30
Any other special requests to be considered
e.g. mobility requirements, room request, timetabling request.
We cannot guarantee to honour all requests.
Session 1 title and chair
Session 1 Title
Please enter the title as it should appear in the conference programme. Sessions with multiple timeslots should be numbered. / Smart Cities: Discourses, Policies and Technologies in the Making 1
Session Chair name / Affiliation / Email address
Ola Söderström / Institute of Geography, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland /
DISCUSSANT for Session 1: Mike Crang, Department of Geography, Durham University,
Session presentation detailsPresentation 1 Title: / (Not So) Smart Cities: the societal drivers and impact of smart environments
Presentation 1 Abstract / In the last few years, the possibility of so-called 'smart' technologies to improve the efficiency and surveillance capabilities of electronic devices such as CCTV has filled both pages of concern and PR leaflets. While the corporations driving these developments have emphasized how smart technologies can improve efficiency at all levels (public administration, mobility management and planning, market analysis,etc.), critics have warned against the risks associated with the proliferation of smart surveillance.
Parallel to this debate, many cities around the world have bought into the 'smart city' paradigm put forward by companies like IBM and CISCO, which have labelled as smart solutions a series of technology applications which have the potential of improving urban mobility and efficiency (from garbage collection to improved parking solutions, sensors, etc.). For all the talk about smart cities, however, a critical or skeptical discourse about the limits and risks of the proliferation of smart technologies is still marginal, and in most instances public officials and decision-makers are ill-equipped to judge both the value and the externalities of the technologies being sold under the label 'smart cities'.
This paper presents a summary of smart solutions applied to urban environments in the last decade, in order to provide a picture of what are the different solutions that make up this paradigm and their actual potential to significantly alter the way cities are run and experienced. On the other hand, it studies these solutions and their proliferation patterns to study the smart city paradigm from a public policy perspective, with an emphasis on the transnational actors and policy transfer mechanisms. Thirdly, it draws on the surveillance literature to address issues of function and discourse creep when it comes to the actual implementation and political use of the global drive to outsmart competing cities in a context of global governance. Through this multi-faceted and multi-disciplinary approach, the paper aims to provide a useful starting point for those interested in understanding the possibilities and risks of the 'smart' paradigm when applied to urban environments.
Author name / Author affiliation / Author email address / Presenter?
Gemma Galdon Clavell / Departament de Sociologia i Anàlisi de les Organitzacions, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain / / Yes
Y/N
Y/N
Presentation 2 Title: / Towards a critique of urban informatics: Smart cities as urbanisation of data
Presentation 2 Abstract / As Friedrich Kittler points out, the urban form since the industrial revolution has been characterised bytwo exemplary inventions of information processing – railroad and telegraph – and their subsequentsuccessors. Both these technolgies of mobility have incrementally collapsed into an unifiedtechnological mesh of mobilities, which simultaneously underlies public governance and privateexperiences of the urban. The planetary imagination of this mesh, as dreamt by earlier proponents ofcybernetics, has recently expanded to inspire data-driven forms of both public and private lives – from‘smart cities' to ‘quantified self'. This paper attempts to understand the making and the functioning ofthe category of ‘data' in the ‘smart cities' discourse, to foreground the urban expansion over andreshaping of the space of data. This is not to argue that the terrain of data is a new or unique space butthat it being ‘urbanised' (following Henri Lefebvre) – that is, the terrain of data is being reorganised forproduction of the global/planetary urbanisation, from data-driven global network infrastructure toautomated micro-environmental management.
The paper engages with the ‘urban informatics' literature (Marcus Foth, Anthony Townshend et al) that focuses on the ‘physical and digital layers of people networks and urban infrastructures.' Itproblematises the ‘digital layer' of people networks and locates the making of urban data as acollectable, archivable and actionable entity within a particular mode of production and social relationsof its producers. Converse to, and complementing, Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin's discussion ofeffects of code (and data processed by them) in producing everyday spatial formations, this paperattempts to understand how the making of ‘smart cities' is built on the control over the mining andproduction of everyday urban data.
Author name / Author affiliation / Author email address / Presenter?
Sumandro Chattapadhyay / Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, India / / Yes
Y/N
Y/N
Presentation 3 Title: / Governing through code in the smart city
Presentation 3 Abstract / Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s understanding of governmentality and power, the paper explores and challenges the surveillance dynamics implied by current smart-city initiatives. Building in particular on Foucault’s distinction between ‘apparatuses [dispositifs] of discipline’ and ‘apparatuses of security’ (Foucault, 2007), the paper aims at exploring the normative and spatial logics and functioning of novel techno-mediated forms and formats of regulation and control, immanent to the digitalisation and informatisation of present-day life.
Empirically speaking, the paper draws upon two case studies, which both relate to specific initiatives (sites) that are designed and framed as laboratories for the development and testing of novel solutions for smarter cities: (1) Future Cities Laboratory, a research platform inaugurated on September 1st 2010 as a joint initiative between the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore; and (2) Ittigen, a municipality situated in close proximity to the city of Bern, devoted to developing and testing new smart solutions in the fields of building technologies, energy, electricity and mobility.
Author name / Author affiliation / Author email address / Presenter?
Francisco Klauser / Institute of Geography, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland / / Yes
Y/N
Y/N
Presentation 4 Title:
Presentation 4 Abstract
Author name / Author affiliation / Author email address / Presenter?
Yes
Y/N
Y/N
Presentation 5 Title:
Presentation 5 Abstract
Author name / Author affiliation / Author email address / Presenter?
Yes
Y/N
Y/N
Session 2 title and chair
Session 2 Title
Please enter the title as it should appear in the conference programme. Sessions with multiple timeslots should be numbered. / Smart Cities: Discourses, Policies and Technologies in the Making 2
Session Chair name / Affiliation / Email address
Francisco Klauser / University of Neuchâtel /
DISCUSSANT for Session 2: Sarah Bell, Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering,University College London,
Session presentation detailsPresentation 1 Title: / Do smart cities become healthier? On well-being and intelligent urban areas
Presentation 1 Abstract / Health and well-being are often considered as baseline goals for urban development and/or regeneration policies. The idea of improving quality of life conditions in urban areas, in fact, is central – if not explicit – to any declaration about intervention in cities: it does not matter if something is directly related to well-being, it matters that if it will be implemented it will surely change people’s life for better. To this extent, the concept of “smartness” in cities will be analysed, since this concept has become more and more popular among policy- and decision-makers in EU cities. A “smart city” is a city that adopts innovations and high-tech solutions to facilitate living in urban areas; a city where creativity and green economy melt into behavioural changes that will booster local economies and, thus, national ones to let EU out of the economic and financial crisis. What does really lie behind such rhetoric? Is there a reflection on the effects of such policies on cities and their inhabitants? On how inclusive are those policies as regards new and/or poor citizens? Does smartness include context specificities and place-based interventions?
Examples of smart policies from EU cities will be provided, and an in-depth analysis of the Italian case of Turin will be used to understand the link between a rhetorical device (the smart city) and the definition of development policies that should impact on citizens’ well-being.
Author name / Author affiliation / Author email address / Presenter?
Marco Santangelo / Polytechnic and University of Torino, Italy / / Yes
Y/N
Y/N
Presentation 2 Title: / Assembling the Smarter City
Presentation 2 Abstract / Although there is much talk around smart cities, today only few standardized smart technologies exist. Instead the different technological aspects of the smart city are currently being disseminated and tested in various pilot projects around the world. Here novel techno-scientific solutions to smarter cities become examinable in their making in distinct locations that act as laboratories for assembling ‘whole’ architectures of composite technologies, guidelines and approaches. Aim of this process pursued by large IT companies and their local partner is the standardisation of smart solutions and the development of lucrative new markets. The paper approaches the issue by following IBM’s smarter cities campaign around different places in the world whilst using an energy pilot project in Ittigen, Switzerland as an exemplary site. Anchored in the mobile urbanism literature and the ANT line of thinking, the purpose is to unpack the chain of mediations through which IBM’s technologies and ideas connect and interact in different sites, and to investigate the relationships, forces and mechanisms that tie them to each other. While there are various qualities relevant to this investigation the focus of the paper will be on the public-private coalitions of authority and the interacting forms of expertise in the making of smart cities as an urban model for the future.
Author name / Author affiliation / Author email address / Presenter?
Till Paasche / Institute of Geography, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland / / Yes
Ola Söderström / Institute of Geography, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland / / No
Y/N
Presentation 3 Title: / Smart cities, design fiction
Presentation 3 Abstract / Visions of future cityscapes pervade the discourse and development of computing and media technologies. This paper addresses the growth of what has been called ‘design fiction’ in relation to the smart cities agenda. Designers and researchers formulate speculative worlds around the applications and systems they propose and design. In turn, these ‘worlds’ become a descriptive language and grammar for the articulation of both agendas and technical systems in the present. In this way, futures are apparently brought into the present. A technological imaginary for future urban life might therefore be foreclosed by glossy corporate imagery. A wealth of ‘design fictions’ for smart cities have been offered by large technology companies. However, with the growth in availability of the means of video production, alternative design fictions are being offered online. This paper discusses the role of ‘design fiction’ in the propagation of the future oriented discourses of smart cities. In conclusion, I argue we can accordingly chart a politics of anticipation in the speculative practices that significantly aid in the construction of ‘smart city’ discourses.
Author name / Author affiliation / Author email address / Presenter?
Sam Kinsley / Digital Cultures Research Centre
University of the West of England, Bristol / / Yes
Y/N
Y/N
Presentation 4 Title: / From “Smart” Barcelona to the world: the discursive construction of the Smart City in Barcelona and the City Protocol
Presentation 4 Abstract / The Smart City concept has been gaining momentum to contribute to the shift towards low carbon, sustainable and inclusive growth in cities across the world, and in particular Europe. Barcelona, acknowledged as 'universal global best practice' in urban regeneration, has shifted its own urban model towards becoming a Smart city global referent. In a context of deep Spanish financial crisis, Barcelona’s official discourses “celebrate” the Smart City both as a solution to the competitive problems of the economy and a more sustainable and resilient way of producing and reimagining the city. In this paper we shed light on the discursive construction of the ‘smart city’ in Barcelona, unpacking the scalar choreographies of power that underpin such a project. Our departing argument is that that we cannot understand the discursive construction of the ‘smart city’ if we do not understand smart cities policies as a new form of mobile urban production policy. In that sense, we observe that the discursive construction of the Smart City in Barcelona does not limit to the urban limits of city but aims upscale its practices to the world through the intertwining of local strategies and transnational initiatives such as the City Protocol. The latter is an ambitious project aiming to set the global standard for smart urbanism, led by Barcelona City Council, Cisco and GDF SUEZ, and gathering cities, institutions, companies and universities across the world.
Author name / Author affiliation / Author email address / Presenter?
Hug March / Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain / / Yes
Ramon Ribera-Fumaz / Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain / / Yes
Y/N
Presentation 5 Title:
Presentation 5 Abstract
Author name / Author affiliation / Author email address / Presenter?
Y/N
Y/N
Y/N