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Making a smart city for the smart grid? The urban material politics of actualising smart electricity networks

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  • Harriet Bulkeley
  • Pauline M McGuirk
  • Robyn Dowling

Abstract

In a growing debate about the smart city, considerations of the ways in which urban infrastructures and their materialities are being reconfigured and contested remain in the shadows of analyses which have been primarily concerned with the management and flow of digitalisation and big data in pursuit of new logics for economic growth. In this paper, we examine the ways in which the ‘smart city’ is being put to work for different ends and through different means. We argue that the co-constitution of the urban as a site for carbon governance and a place where smart energy systems are developed is leading to novel forms of governmental intervention operating at the conjunction of the grid and the city. We seek to move beyond examining the rationales and discourses of such interventions to engage with the ways in which they are actualised in and through particular urban conditions in order to draw attention to their material politics. In so doing, we argue that the urban is not a mere backdrop to transitions in electricity provision and use but central to its politics, while electricity is also critical to the ways in which we should understand the politics of urbanism.

Suggested Citation

  • Harriet Bulkeley & Pauline M McGuirk & Robyn Dowling, 2016. "Making a smart city for the smart grid? The urban material politics of actualising smart electricity networks," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 48(9), pages 1709-1726, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:48:y:2016:i:9:p:1709-1726
    DOI: 10.1177/0308518X16648152
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Pauline M McGuirk, 2004. "State, Strategy, and Scale in the Competitive City: A Neo-Gramscian Analysis of the Governance of ‘Global Sydney’," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 36(6), pages 1019-1043, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. Lund, Henrik & Østergaard, Poul Alberg & Connolly, David & Mathiesen, Brian Vad, 2017. "Smart energy and smart energy systems," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 556-565.
    2. Trencher, Gregory, 2019. "Towards the smart city 2.0: Empirical evidence of using smartness as a tool for tackling social challenges," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 117-128.
    3. Kummitha, Rama Krishna Reddy, 2018. "Entrepreneurial urbanism and technological panacea: Why Smart City planning needs to go beyond corporate visioning?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 330-339.

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