Smart city visions, narratives and problematization

: comparing smart Belfast and smart Indore

Abstract

This study is concerned with the rationalisation of increasing datafication of urban centres and the impact it has on the governance of cities and its citizens. To this end, it explores the visions, norms, and narratives of smart cities. It considers the role that international, national, and local stakeholders – following the quadruple helix model of governance which includes government, corporate, academia, and civic society – play in rationalising urban centre’s datafication. To offer some understandings of how smart city narratives develop in a wider global context, it compares the smart city projects of Belfast and Indore. The thesis builds on the theoretical framework of imaginaries and governmentalities to argue that smart city imaginaries problematize certain aspects of contemporary cities to present digital technologies as the ideal solution. Such problematizations in turn allow smart city imaginaries to visualise a data-intensive future for cities. Cities are conceptualised as unsustainable, inefficient and lacking good quality of life and economic growth. Digital technologies are presented as tools that can help build cities that are not only sustainable, efficient, with good quality of life and economic growth but also citizen centric. These global and national narratives have impacted the local smart city projects in Belfast and Indore. These cities rationalise their smart city projects on broad problematizations and recraft their challenges to fit within the smart city discourse. The involvement of international governance and corporate entities with national strategies has allowed similar imaginaries to be followed in distinct cities. Smart cities bring the ethos and values of datafication to lived-in cities which impacts the future growth and governance of cities and their citizens. There is a need to critically question these ethos and values to ensure that cities work for its citizens and not technology.

Date of Award	Jul 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Queen's University Belfast
Sponsors	CITI-GENS, Horizon 2020
Supervisor	Muiris MacCarthaigh (Supervisor) & John Morison (Supervisor)