Smart City Gnosys
Smart city article details
| Title | Interstitiality In The Smart City: More Than Top-Down And Bottom-Up Smartness |
|---|---|
| ID_Doc | 33183 |
| Authors | Burns R.; Welker P. |
| Year | 2023 |
| Published | Urban Studies, 60, 2 |
| DOI | http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00420980221097590 |
| Abstract | The critical research agenda on smart cities has tended to assume a largely top-down orientation in which powerful actors like the state and corporations enact programmes to embed Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) in the urban landscape. Because of the way research has framed this relation of power, the dominant response has been to seek social justice by either contesting these top-down exercises of (digital) power or by reconceptualising the smart city 'from below'. In this paper, we join a growing chorus of voices recognising the importance of interstitial actors that influence the ways in which the smart city manifests. We draw on a five-year ongoing study in Calgary, Alberta, to examine two actor groups that are, properly, neither top-down nor bottom-up, but play an important role in envisioning, implementing and contesting how 'smartness' is framed. The first set of actors, situated between the top and bottom of the smart city hierarchy, are most prominently community associations, non-profit organisations and ad-hoc task groups. The second group is comprised of groups with different digital practices, whose spectre of marginalisation influences how digital systems are articulated and pursued. These actors strategically move between different interstices in order to enact particular kinds of political influence, and often influence smart cities by virtue of their absence, profoundly impacting urban political geographies of smartness. |
| Author Keywords | community; digital geographies; inequality; politics; smart cities; technology |
Similar Articles
| Id | Similarity | Authors | Title | Published |
|---|---|---|---|---|
51683  | 0.909 | Cardullo, P; Kitchin, R | Smart Urbanism And Smart Citizenship: The Neoliberal Logic Of 'Citizen-Focused' Smart Cities In Europe | ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING C-POLITICS AND SPACE, 37, 5 (2019) |
| 31011 | 0.906 | Zandbergen, D; Uitermark, J | In Search Of The Smart Citizen: Republican And Cybernetic Citizenship In The Smart City | URBAN STUDIES, 57, 8 (2020) |
| 31093 | 0.906 | Kim K. | Inclusion, Exclusion, And Participation In Digital Polis: Double-Edged Development Of Poor Urban Communities In Alternative Smart City-Making | Advances in 21st Century Human Settlements (2023) |
| 43350 | 0.904 | Tello, AM | Program And Govern. Technological-Political Disputes In The Era Of Smart Cities | ARBOR-CIENCIA PENSAMIENTO Y CULTURA, 198, 803 (2022) |
| 37767 | 0.903 | Sadowski, J; Maalsen, S | Modes Of Making Smart Cities: Or, Practices Of Variegated Smart Urbanism | TELEMATICS AND INFORMATICS, 55 (2020) |
| 60 | 0.903 | Mouton, M; Burns, R | (Digital) Neo-Colonialism In The Smart City | REGIONAL STUDIES, 55, 12 (2021) |
| 39037 | 0.901 | Ting T.-Y. | Networked Disobedience To Smart City Development: The Case Of Hong Kong | IET Smart Cities, 7, 1 (2025) |
| 56760 | 0.901 | Breux, S; Diaz, J; Loiseau, H | The Smart City - Does The Individual Matter? | JOURNAL OF URBAN TECHNOLOGY, 30, 4 (2023) |
| 60023 | 0.899 | Sepehr P.; Felt U. | Urban Imaginaries As Tacit Governing Devices: The Case Of Smart City Vienna | Science Technology and Human Values, 50, 2 (2025) |
| 57815 | 0.898 | Krivy, M | Towards A Critique Of Cybernetic Urbanism: The Smart City And The Society Of Control | PLANNING THEORY, 17, 1 (2018) |