IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v46y2014i4p803-819.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Smart Cities and Green Growth: Outsourcing Democratic and Environmental Resilience to the Global Technology Sector

Author

Listed:
  • Jenni Viitanen
  • Richard Kingston

Abstract

Climate change and advances in urban technology propel forward the ‘smart city’. As decision makers strive to find a technological fix, smart city strategies are often based on technological orthodoxies which are conceptually and empirically shallow. The motivation behind this paper is to address the conceptual adolescence which relates to the wholesale digitisation of the city by pursuing a twin argument about the democratic and environmental consequences. The authors draw on interdisciplinary theory and insights from urban studies, infrastructure, informatics, and the sociology of the Internet to critique the way the ‘smart city’ is taken forward. It is concluded that private firms market smart city services and solutions based on an ideological legacy of ‘ubiquitous computing’, ‘universal infrastructure’, and ‘green technology’. Based on evidence from three UK cities—Manchester, Birmingham, and Glasgow—it is argued that the underlying principle of future city strategies is to expand the market for new technology products and services to support ‘green growth’ with disregard for their wider impacts. For citizens, becoming a consumer of the technologies is often presented as progressive ‘participation’ or ‘empowerment’ with unknown or hidden consequences both political and environmental. The city systems become a digital marketplace where citizen-consumers' participation is increasingly involuntary and the hegemony of global technology firms is inflated. What follows is that the city's ‘intelligent systems' are defined through a digital consumer experience that has inherent biases and leaves parts of the city and its population unaccounted for. This renders the city less resilient in the face of future social and climatic risks.

Suggested Citation

  • Jenni Viitanen & Richard Kingston, 2014. "Smart Cities and Green Growth: Outsourcing Democratic and Environmental Resilience to the Global Technology Sector," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 46(4), pages 803-819, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:46:y:2014:i:4:p:803-819
    DOI: 10.1068/a46242
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a46242
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/a46242?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Federico Cugurullo, 2013. "How to Build a Sandcastle: An Analysis of the Genesis and Development of Masdar City," Journal of Urban Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(1), pages 23-37, January.
    2. Robert G. Hollands, 2008. "Will the real smart city please stand up?," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(3), pages 303-320, December.
    3. Allan Cochrane & Jamie Peck & Adam Tickell, 1996. "Manchester Plays Games: Exploring the Local Politics of Globalisation," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 33(8), pages 1319-1336, October.
    4. Aidan While & Andrew E. G. Jonas & David Gibbs, 2004. "The environment and the entrepreneurial city: searching for the urban ‘sustainability fix’ in Manchester and Leeds," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 549-569, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Georgina Blakeley, 2010. "Governing Ourselves: Citizen Participation and Governance in Barcelona and Manchester," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(1), pages 130-145, March.
    2. Kitchin, Rob & Cardullo, Paolo & Di Feliciantonio, Cesare, 2018. "Citizenship, Justice and the Right to the Smart City," SocArXiv b8aq5, Center for Open Science.
    3. Akçura, M. Tolga & Avci, S. Burcu, 2014. "How to make global cities: Information communication technologies and macro-level variables," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 68-79.
    4. Valeria Saiu, 2017. "The Three Pitfalls of Sustainable City: A Conceptual Framework for Evaluating the Theory-Practice Gap," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-23, December.
    5. Jooseok Oh & Minho Seo, 2021. "Measuring Citizens-Centric Smart City: Development and Validation of Ex-Post Evaluation Framework," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-22, October.
    6. Mora, Luca & Deakin, Mark & Reid, Alasdair, 2019. "Combining co-citation clustering and text-based analysis to reveal the main development paths of smart cities," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 56-69.
    7. Mora, Luca & Deakin, Mark & Reid, Alasdair, 2019. "Strategic principles for smart city development: A multiple case study analysis of European best practices," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 70-97.
    8. Calzada, Igor, 2015. "Calzada, I. & Cobo, C. (2015), Unplugging: Deconstructing the Smart City. Journal of Urban Technology 22(1): 23-43. DOI: 10.1080/10630732.2014.971535," SocArXiv kmpf8, Center for Open Science.
    9. Andreani, Stefano & Kalchschmidt, Matteo & Pinto, Roberto & Sayegh, Allen, 2019. "Reframing technologically enhanced urban scenarios: A design research model towards human centered smart cities," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 15-25.
    10. Melissa Garcia-Lamarca & Isabelle Anguelovski & Helen Cole & James JT Connolly & Lucía Argüelles & Francesc Baró & Stephanie Loveless & Carmen Pérez del Pulgar Frowein & Galia Shokry, 2021. "Urban green boosterism and city affordability: For whom is the ‘branded’ green city?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(1), pages 90-112, January.
    11. Yigitcanlar, Tan & Han, Hoon & Kamruzzaman, Md. & Ioppolo, Giuseppe & Sabatini-Marques, Jamile, 2019. "The making of smart cities: Are Songdo, Masdar, Amsterdam, San Francisco and Brisbane the best we could build?," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    12. Antoine Clarinval & Anthony Simonofski & Julie Henry & Benoît Vanderose & Bruno Dumas, 2023. "Introducing the Smart City to Children: Lessons Learned from Hands-On Workshops in Classes," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-22, January.
    13. Constance Carr & Markus Hesse, 2020. "When Alphabet Inc. Plans Toronto’s Waterfront: New Post-Political Modes of Urban Governance," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(1), pages 69-83.
    14. Ebru Tekin Bilbil, 2017. "The Operationalizing Aspects of Smart Cities: the Case of Turkey’s Smart Strategies," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 8(3), pages 1032-1048, September.
    15. Tuba Bakıcı & Esteve Almirall & Jonathan Wareham, 2013. "A Smart City Initiative: the Case of Barcelona," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 4(2), pages 135-148, June.
    16. Coletta, Claudio & Heaphy, Liam & Kitchin, Rob, 2017. "From the accidental to articulated smart city: The creation and work of ‘Smart Dublin’," SocArXiv 93ga5, Center for Open Science.
    17. Andrew Clarke & Lynda Cheshire, 2018. "The post-political state? The role of administrative reform in managing tensions between urban growth and liveability in Brisbane, Australia," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(16), pages 3545-3562, December.
    18. Paola Panuccio, 2019. "Smart Planning: From City to Territorial System," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(24), pages 1-15, December.
    19. Vu, Khuong & Hartley, Kris, 2018. "Promoting smart cities in developing countries: Policy insights from Vietnam," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(10), pages 845-859.
    20. Maria Vincenza Ciasullo & Orlando Troisi & Mara Grimaldi & Daniele Leone, 2020. "Multi-level governance for sustainable innovation in smart communities: an ecosystems approach," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 1167-1195, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:46:y:2014:i:4:p:803-819. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.