Smart City Gnosys

Smart city article details

Title	The Barcelona Imaginaries: A Decade Of Digital Politics
ID_Doc	54994
Authors	Calleja-López A.; Cancela E.; Jiménez A.
Year	2025
Published	City, 29, 1-2
DOI	http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2025.2465926
Abstract	Over the past decade and a half, Barcelona has been widely recognized as a ‘smart city’. Since 2015, it has also gained attention as a ‘rebel city’, with an alternative imaginary to that of the corporate smart city and, more broadly, others launched from Silicon Valley. This article analyzes a decade of opposing imaginaries around digital politics in the Catalan capital. It illustrates how Barcelona moved from a narrative of smartness to one of technological sovereignty and, from there, to one of technological humanism. These shifts went hand in hand with institutional innovations that reinforced, successively, the centrality of public-private, public-common, and, finally, public-private-community partnerships (with this latter model representing a return of the centrality of the public-private axis). Drawing on fieldwork and desk research, the article systematically maps numerous visions and projects associated with these three imaginaries. Finally, the study uses the case of Barcelona to understand recent changes in digital capitalism. © 2025 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Author Keywords	smart cities; smart privatization; sociotechnical imaginaries; technological humanism; technological sovereignty; technopolitical democratization

Similar Articles

Id	Similarity	Authors	Title	Published
37983	0.912	Ribera-Fumaz R.	Moving From Smart Citizens To Technological Sovereignty?	The Right to the Smart City (2019)
11621	0.897	March H.; Ribera-Fumaz R.	Barcelona: From Corporate Smart City To Technological Sovereignty	Inside Smart Cities: Place, Politics and Urban Innovation (2018)
49180	0.887	Alizadeh T.; Dutia E.; Clements R.	Smart Barcelona: The Gap Between Inspiring Rhetoric And Lackluster Implementation In Transformative Approaches	Planning Practice and Research, 39, 5 (2024)
50890	0.881	Roberts L.	Smart Feminist Cities: The Case Of Barcelona En Comú	Women Philosophers on Economics, Technology, Environment, and Gender History: Shaping the Future, Rethinking the Past (2023)
60023	0.875	Sepehr P.; Felt U.	Urban Imaginaries As Tacit Governing Devices: The Case Of Smart City Vienna	Science Technology and Human Values, 50, 2 (2025)
33183	0.873	Burns R.; Welker P.	Interstitiality In The Smart City: More Than Top-Down And Bottom-Up Smartness	Urban Studies, 60, 2 (2023)
20091	0.87	Certoma C.	Digital Social Innovation: Spatial Imaginaries And Technological Resistances In Urban Governance	Digital Social Innovation: Spatial Imaginaries and Technological Resistances in Urban Governance (2021)
7283	0.869	Vadiati N.	Alternatives To Smart Cities: A Call For Consideration Of Grassroots Digital Urbanism	Digital Geography and Society, 3 (2022)
24	0.866	Mann, M; Mitchell, P; Foth, M; Anastasiu, I	#Blocksidewalkto Barcelona: Technological Sovereignty And The Social License To Operate Smart Cities	JOURNAL OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, 71, 9 (2020)
31799	0.863	Krisch A.	Institutionalizing Digital Infrastructures: Discursive Institutionalization Of Public Platforms In Vienna	European Journal of Spatial Development, 19, 3 (2022)