ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in this book. Some of the techniques people are dealing with here are specifically techniques around information flows (the ICT world). Smart urbanism is a loosely connected set of confluences between data, digital technologies and urban sites and processes. Smart urbanism is connected to a wide range of urban governance discourses and practices, identifying in the process important avenues for critical urban research here. If there is a technological determinism at work in many smart city initiatives, there is also often too an accompanying prominence, for large multinational corporations and for a certain faith in economic efficiency as a vehicle to more effective cities. The book concludes with three reflections on researching smart: the first relates to the theoretical stakes, the second to questions of urban governance and the third focuses on the methodological challenges of researching smart urbanism.
