ABSTRACT
Recent writing on urbanism has made much of the way that technology is changing the relationship between the body and the city. This chapter explores how urban studies have tried to make sense of science and technology as shapers of the urban landscape. It moves from accounts where technology is allocated a determining role in urban life to those where it is regarded as entwined in a more complex process of city-making. The chapter attempts to make sense of the promiscuous materiality of the city, alerting to the multiple forms of agency and life which abound in the urban realm. It explores how contemporary urban theory accounts for the different agents that animate our cities, be they human, nonhuman or hybrids that fall somewhere in between these taken for granted categories. From the perspective of actor network theory, smart cities can be viewed as ones where any inhabitant is seen to have an influence on the city's metabolism.
