163 EIGHT Smart cities work After seventy years of near-total decline, after decades of sustained depopulation, suburbanisation, industrial depression, cultural collapse and political castration, could it be that British cities are starting to revive their long-lost Victorian ethic? (Tristram Hunt)1 In the final two chapters of this book we set out five ways in which jigsaw cities can evolve. In this chapter we look first at the notion of recycling cities through smart growth, and second at the need for neighbourhood management as part of renewing them. In the
283 CHAPTER 11 From smart cities to wise cities What we urgently need today is a more inclusive view of what it means to be a scholar – a recognition that knowledge is acquired through research, through synthesis, through practice, and through teaching Ernest L. Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered, 1990 Introduction Digital enthusiasts argue that smart cities are a panacea. They claim that the current revolution in communication technologies will transform cities in the 21st Century in the way that electricity changed them in the last. For sceptics these claims
Introduction Over the past decade, many cities have adopted policies and rolled out programmes and projects designed to transform them into a ‘smart city’. It is clear from the plethora of initiatives underway globally that the idea and ideals of smart cities are quite broadly conceived, with enterprises ranging from those: aimed at changing the nature of urban regulation and governance through the use of data-driven systems that make the city knowable and controllable in new, dynamic, reactive ways; to digital systems that improve the efficiency and
The ‘smart city’ is often promoted as a technology-driven solution to complex urban issues. While commentators are increasingly critical of techno-optimistic narratives, the political imagination is dominated by claims that technical solutions can be uniformly applied to intractable problems.
This book provides a much-needed alternative view, exploring how ‘home-grown’ digital disruption, driven and initiated by local actors, upends the mainstream corporate narrative.
Drawing on original research conducted in a range of urban African settings, Odendaal shows how these initiatives can lead to meaningful change.
This is a valuable resource for scholars working in the intersection of science and technology studies, urban and economic geography and sociology.
Introduction In 2017, I was invited to speak at a workshop in Calgary, Canada, on the African smart city. I found this to be a curiously ill-defined task given the size and diversity of the continent. The central message I hoped to convey was that the manifestation of digital technologies is intrinsically connected to people’s livelihood strategies. What distinguishes African cities, if one is to generalize, are a number of features that colour the incorporation of information and communication technology (ICT) into city processes: informality, crumbling
City visions represent shared, and often desirable, expectations about our urban futures. This book explores the history and evolution of city visions, placing them in the wider context of art, culture, science, foresight and urban theory.
It highlights and critically reviews examples of city visions from around the world, contrasting their development and outlining the key benefits and challenges in planning such visions.
The authors show how important it is to think about the future of cities in objective and strategic ways, engaging with a range of stakeholders – something more important than ever as we look to visions of a sustainable future beyond the COVID-19 crisis.
This book uses an international perspective and draws on a wide range of new conceptual and empirical material to examine the sources of conflict and cooperation within the different landscapes of knowledge that are driving contemporary urban change. Based on the premise that historically established systems of regulation and control are being subject to unprecedented pressures, scholars critically reflect on the changing role of planning and governance in sustainable urban development, looking at how a shift in power relations between expert and local cultures in western planning processes has blurred the traditional boundaries between public, private and voluntary sectors.
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence.
Sustainable urbanisation has moved to the forefront of global debate, research and policy agendas over recent years. Rapid urbanisation throughout China, India and many other low and middle income countries poses new challenges both locally and internationally at a time when urban areas worldwide are threatened by climate/environmental change.
This compact book is designed to make a signal contribution to the sustainable urbanisation agenda through authoritative interventions contextualising, assessing and explaining clearly the relevance and importance of three central characteristics of sustainable towns and cities everywhere, namely that they should be accessible, green and fair.
These three terms form key tenets of the work of Mistra Urban Futures (MUF), an international research centre on sustainable urbanisation based in Gothenburg, Sweden, and working through transdisciplinary research platforms there, in Greater Manchester (UK), Cape Town (South Africa) and Kisumu (Kenya). Additional platforms are being established in southern Sweden, Asia and Africa.
Cities are often seen as helpless victims in a global flow of events and many view growing inequality in cities as inevitable. This engaging book rejects this gloomy prognosis and argues that imaginative place-based leadership can enable citizens to shape the urban future in accordance with progressive values – advancing social justice, promoting care for the environment and bolstering community empowerment.
This international and comparative book, written by an experienced author, shows how inspirational civic leaders are making a major difference in cities across the world. The analysis provides practical lessons for local leaders and a significant contribution to thinking on public service innovation for anyone who wants to change urban society for the better.
The word ‘data’ has entered everyday conversation, but do we really understand what it means? How can we begin to grasp the scope and scale of our new data-rich world, and can we truly comprehend what is at stake?
In Data Lives, renowned social scientist Rob Kitchin explores the intricacies of data creation and charts how data-driven technologies have become essential to how society, government and the economy work.
Creatively blending scholarly analysis, biography and fiction, he demonstrates how data are shaped by social and political forces, and the extent to which they influence our daily lives.
He reveals our data world to be one of potential danger, but also of hope.
