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Beyond the Smart or Resilient City: In Search of Sustainability in the Sojan Thirdspace

Author

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  • Philip Cooke

    (Mohn Center for Innovation & Regional Development, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, 5020 Bergen, Norway)

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore some of the issues to be welcomed but also warned against in general and’ also specified from an illustrative sample of ‘smart’ projects that caused outcomes that were neither ‘smart’ nor ‘resilient’. These give pointers to a ‘thirdspace’ as a descriptor of ‘assemblage’, the most advanced application of sustainability thinking regarding relational spatial development planning. This contribution examines difficulties in delivering both ‘smart’ and ‘resilient’ responses of interest or value to citizens confronted with recurring crises that derive directly or with implications for sustainability issues. Identified are constraints and issues acting as obstacles to governance, management ‘layering’ and ‘learning’ causing failures of many weak or never-delivered projects. Critiques of static, or worse ‘magical’ thinking are increasingly invoked in consequence. In the analysis of ‘live cases’ all these problems showed up ‘in real life’. The author was pleased that his mentor, the late UCLA planning theorist Ed Soja’s application of the idea of ‘Thirdspace’ received prescient vindication from the results of this adjudication.

Suggested Citation

  • Philip Cooke, 2022. "Beyond the Smart or Resilient City: In Search of Sustainability in the Sojan Thirdspace," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-17, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2022:i:1:p:145-:d:1011195
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert G. Hollands, 2008. "Will the real smart city please stand up?," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(3), pages 303-320, December.
    2. Ola Söderström & Till Paasche & Francisco Klauser, 2014. "Smart cities as corporate storytelling," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(3), pages 307-320, June.
    3. Philip Cooke, 2022. "Callous Optimism: On Some Wishful Thinking ‘Blowbacks’ Undermining SDG Spatial Policy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(8), pages 1-14, April.
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