ABSTRACT
The concept and the application of the smart city are increasingly being critiqued for their underlying neoliberal ideology, which privileges efficiency in capital accumulation and management over the subjectivity and necessities of everyday human life. There are similar concerns being expressed about smart games’ ‘invisible hand’, controlling rather than creating felicity and salubrity. In this chapter, we unpack these underlying and interlocking ideologies where they converge: in gamified smart city technologies. We are especially interested in the ways such technologies are used to solicit public participation or instead to create tokenised and disempowered forms of cooperation rather than foster deep democratic engagement. We argue for an appreciation of the ‘stupid’ in cities, games and politics, a prizing of the slow, the reflective and the critical as essential components of a just, humane and enjoyable world.
