scholarly journals Rethinking Smart Urbanism: City-Making and the Spread of Digital Infrastructures in Nairobi

10.33540/497 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
PRINCE KARAKIRE GUMA
Keyword(s):  
Smart Urbanism

scholarly journals A novel model for data-driven smart sustainable cities of the future: the institutional transformations required for balancing and advancing the three goals of sustainability

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Elias Bibri
Keyword(s):  
Smart Cities ◽  
Case Study Research ◽  
Development Planning ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Sustainable Cities ◽  
Sustainable Urbanism ◽  
The Future ◽  
Novel Model ◽  
Smart Urbanism

AbstractIn recent years, it has become increasingly feasible to achieve important improvements of sustainability by integrating sustainable urbanism with smart urbanism thanks to the proven role and synergic potential of data-driven technologies. Indeed, the processes and practices of both of these approaches to urban planning and development are becoming highly responsive to a form of data-driven urbanism, giving rise to a new phenomenon known as “data-driven smart sustainable urbanism.” Underlying this emerging approach is the idea of combining and integrating the strengths of sustainable cities and smart cities and harnessing the synergies of their strategies and solutions in ways that enable sustainable cities to optimize, enhance, and maintain their performance on the basis of the innovative data-driven technologies offered by smart cities. These strengths and synergies can be clearly demonstrated by combining the advantages of sustainable urbanism and smart urbanism. To enable such combination, major institutional transformations are required in terms of enhanced and new practices and competences. Based on case study research, this paper identifies, distills, and enumerates the key benefits, potentials, and opportunities of sustainable cities and smart cities with respect to the three dimensions of sustainability, as well as the key institutional transformations needed to support the balancing of these dimensions and to enable the introduction of data-driven technology and the adoption of applied data-driven solutions in city operational management and development planning. This paper is an integral part of a futures study that aims to analyze, investigate, and develop a novel model for data-driven smart sustainable cities of the future. I argue that the emerging data-driven technologies for sustainability as innovative niches are reconfiguring the socio-technical landscape of institutions, as well as providing insights to policymakers into pathways for strengthening existing institutionalized practices and competences and developing and establishing new ones. This is necessary for balancing and advancing the goals of sustainability and thus achieving a desirable future.

Modes of making smart cities: Or, practices of variegated smart urbanism

2020 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 101449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jathan Sadowski ◽  
Sophia Maalsen
Keyword(s):  
Smart Cities ◽  
Smart Urbanism

Everyday urbanisms and the importance of place: Exploring the elements of the emancipatory smart city

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 004209802097097
Author(s):  
Nancy Odendaal
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Transformational Change ◽  
Human Dimensions ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Visual Narrative ◽  
Technology Appropriation ◽  
Multiple Dimensions ◽  
Smart Urbanism

Two of the most striking features of smart city discourses are the centrality of technology as a driver of transformational change and the strange ‘placelessness’ of its visual narrative. Whether envisaged in Kenya or Singapore, the commercial smart city is represented as a ‘city in a box’, seemingly capable of solving complex social issues through algorithms and technical innovation. Recently a robust literature has emerged that is critical of the techno-determinism inherent in smart city discussions. This paper expands on this critique by arguing that by solely focusing on the material dimensions of technologically informed urban change, devoid of context, we miss an opportunity to uncover an important moment in contemporary urbanity. By foregrounding the human dimensions of technology appropriation and the interface with livelihoods in their particular spatial contexts, this paper consciously decentres the dominant smart city discourse by arguing for the foregrounding of local dynamics. This paper rejects the universalisms embedded in smart city promises and argues that by provincialising the idea of smart urbanism, opportunities are presented for understanding the true markers of contemporary urbanism. Critical debates on the smart city, and by extension the need to consider smart urbanism contextually and as an infrastructure, relationally, together with the conceptual insights provided by postcolonial science and technology studies, contribute to a proposed frame for researching the ongoing dynamic between contemporary urban life and technological innovation. Empirical vignettes from urban Africa are used to illustrate the multiple dimensions of the interface between livelihoods and technology appropriation.

scholarly journals Developing a critical understanding of smart urbanism?

Urban Studies ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 52 (12) ◽  
pp. 2105-2116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrés Luque-Ayala ◽  
Simon Marvin
Keyword(s):  
Critical Understanding ◽  
Smart Urbanism
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