ABSTRACT
This chapter shows the interconnections between the data-driven ‘smart city’ and the tenets of neoliberal urbanism, the organisation and management of city life based on the marketisation of service provision and social relations. It provides a discussion and a working definition of neoliberal urbanism, collating its common discursive and ideological underpinnings with regards to the ‘smart city’ movement, while also exploring its variety with regards to policy translation and implementation through different scales and places. The connections between capital and power in driving the processes of urbanization, and in reproducing sociospatial structures and power relations in cities, have been explored by a vast literature. The climate of market-led and technology-enabled solutions to urban problems and the continuous cuts in personnel, training, and resources the public sector has been subject to because of austerity measures have determined a withdrawal of cities from the cutting-edge research and development of technological innovation and from upgrading of their own infrastructures.
