The session recording will be archived on the site until June 25th, 2023

This session was streamed but not recorded

Curated Track: 

Description:

The push for contextually informed learning of smart cities is neither too new nor too old in the critical scholarship. To deepen our understanding of smart cities, scholars have highlighted that we need to channel the scholarship toward “contrasting geographies” (Luque-Ayala & Marvin, 2015) and produce more comparative research and situated learnings in time and space focusing both on the global North and the global South (Kitchin, 2015; Shelton et al., 2015; Miller et al., 2021). Here, the underlying argument questioning the centers of power and knowledge production can be traced within the scholarship of urban studies (Robinson, 2006; Roy, 2011, Sheppard et al., 2013; Lawhon & Truelove, 2020).
While addressing this need for provincialization, scholars have argued that in the case of southern smart cities a smart archetype, adopted uncritically from the models of development of the global North, sidelines the basic infrastructural needs and services of the diverse urban dwellers (Datta, 2015; Odendaal, 2011; Watson, 2014). While planning and implementation, southern smart cities fall prey to a top-down approach despite their policymaking aiming for a bottom-up approach by maximizing citizen engagement (Das, 2020). In addition, informality and scales of governance add to the existing complexities of southern (smart) cities. We believe that the goal of critical scholarship is to continue expanding on comparative research on situated and contrasting smart cities.

We invite paper contributions offering critical perspectives of smart cities discourse in the global South on sustainability and citizens’ engagement, contributing alternative frameworks and methodologies to the study of sustainability and citizenry, and/or critically analyzing smart success stories through those discourses. Studies involving North-South or South-South comparisons are particularly welcomed. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
• Critical views on smart and sustainable development and north-south binaries
• Political ecology analysis of ‘smart’ green and sustainable development-related programs
• Critical perspective on inclusive and just sustainable policies of the smart cities in both the global North and the global South
• Scales of governance OR a comparative analysis of the governance in the global North and the global South
• Policymaking, policy mobility, and implementation analysis of the smart cities in the global South
• Provincialization of smart cities – sustainability for whom and/or whose rights?
• Right to the smart city
• Role of civil society organizations in sustainable and inclusive development in the southern smart cities

Non-Presenting Participants