ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the evolution of the ‘Barcelona Model’ of smart city transformation in the context of crisis and austerity. We trace this evolution from an especially dogmatic vision of the smart city, under a centre-right city council, to its radical repurposing under the auspices of a municipal government led, after May 2015, by the citizens’ platform Barcelona en Comú. We pay particular attention to the new council’s objectives to harness digital platform technologies to enhance participative democracy, and its agenda to secure the right to the (smart) city. While stressing the progressive intent of these aims, we also acknowledge the challenge of going beyond the repurposing of smart technologies so as to engender new and radical forms of subjectivity among citizens themselves; a necessary basis for any social-ecological revolution.
