ABSTRACT
Producing a form of smart urbanism that realizes promises while curtailing perils is no easy task – and is perhaps impossible at a deep ideological level given the many stakeholders and vested interests involved and their differing politics, approaches, aims and ambitions. Nonetheless, trying to negotiate across these interests and ambitions is necessary if critique is to transition, even if in partial and limited ways, into the reframing, reimagining and remaking of smart cities so that they are more emancipatory, empowering and inclusive. Smart city technologies enact algorithmic governance and forms of automated management – city systems are measured, analysed, and outcomes assessed and acted upon in an automatic, automated and autonomous fashion. Cities have a range of different, often competing, actors and stakeholders – government bodies, public sector agencies, companies, nongovernmental bodies, community organizations and so on – that have different goals, resources, practices and structures and are trying to address and manage various issues.
