Spaces of visibility in the smart city: flagship urban spaces and the smart urban imaginary

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SAGE Publications via the DOI in this record.Smart urbanism is a currently popular and widespread way of conceptualising the future city. At the same time, the smart city is critiqued by several scholars as difficult to define, and as being almost invisible to the naked eye. The paper explores two urban spaces through which the smart city is rendered visible, in two UK cities that are prominent sites for smart urban experimentation and development. Bristol’s Data Dome, and Glasgow’s Operations Centre are analysed in light of their iconic nature. The paper develops a conceptual understanding of these flagship spaces of the actually existing smart cities through three interrelated conceptual lenses. Firstly, they are understood as a videological type of Leibniz’s concept of the windowless monad. Secondly, they are conceptualised as examples of banal and serialised architecture. Thirdly, these spaces and their attendant buildings are understood as totemic assemblages that point to newly emergent forms of elite urban power.This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number ES/L015978/2), ‘Smart eco-cities for a green economy: a comparative study of Europe and China (SMART-ECO).

Future cities: moving from technical to human needs

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Palgrave Macmillan via the DOI in this record.The article argues for a foregrounding of human needs at the heart of urban societal futures. While economic, technical and environmental imperatives are understandably the focus of policymaking and governance arrangements at national and supra-national scales, defining and targeting priorities in the ‘ordinary’ city is key. The argument is that it is now time to place basic human needs (as enshrined both in international agreements and in the more prosaic conditions of specific cities) at the centre of thinking and planning for future cities. The piece therefore proposes that plans for urban futures start from an elaboration of contextually sensitive as well as internationally negotiated needs rather than from macro-scale and potentially ephemeral visions of glittering technological future metropoles.This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/L015978/1 and ES/N014138/2

Making sense of the green economy

This special issue editorial explores potential research interfaces between human geography and the rapidly unfolding concept and practices of the "green economy". The article outlines a range of critical issues about the green economy that are particularly pertinent and suited to geographical analysis. The first concerns questions around the construction of the green economy concept and critical questioning of current, largely hegemonic neoliberal, growth-focused and technocentric definitions of the green economy. The second broaches the spatial complexities of green economic transitions, while the third discusses the need for critical appraisal of the logics and mechanisms of governance and transition that see the green economy as a key mechanism for economic, social and environmental change. The fourth focuses on the crucial issue of micro-level and individual practices and behaviour, and on links between individual behaviour and wider economic-environmental governance and economic systems. Finally, the article discusses the need for scholars to engage in imaginative consideration of alternatives to current, growth-focused paradigms and conceptualizations of the green economy

Challenging the eco-city: residents’ perceptions of social sustainability in Tianjin Eco-City, China

In this chapter, we make the case for ‘humanizing’ new-build urban mega-projects such as eco-cities by focusing on urban social sustainability, and on the experiences of new residents in newly-built cities such as Tianjin eco-city. We base our conceptual framework in the context of debates over social sustainability (Dempsey et al. 2011; Vallance et al. 2011; Woodcraft 2015), and argue that there is a need to also focus on the way(s) in which socially sustainable urban environments are constructed, in new urban spaces, through relational networks comprised by interactions between residents, buildings, facilities and specifc (e.g. domestic) spaces. In focusing on the spaces of urban social sustainability we draw on Jane Jacobs’ seminal work on, and critique of, the modern city (Jacobs 1961). Jacobs’ work is useful here because of its focus on moving past the plans, blueprints and rational urban visions proposed by master planners, engineers and architects, and towards valuing the role of the rather messier relationality found in the everyday city. [...

Emerging platform urbanism in China: reconfigurations of data, citizenship and materialities

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.In this article, we argue for an extension of current debates on smart urbanism in China by focusing on the emergence of urban platforms as a key way in which Chinese cities are developing into digitally-enhanced and governed urban areas. China has undergone multiple rounds of thematic urban development, culminating in a recent policy focus on the smart city and on digitally-enhanced urbanism. We argue that this has now evolved, and outline the rapidly emerging phenomenon of platform urbanism, which we conceptualise as not only confined to the policy sphere, but as stretching across the policy-governance-corporate nexus, the market, and urban consumption practices and broader culture. We do so by focusing on key themes emerging in contemporary platform-based digital urban development in China: a.) the rapidly developing geography of urban platforms; b.) a swiftly expanding mass of data and its implications for state-private sector power geometries; c.) domestic urban policy and practice mobilities, and consequences for the circulation of digital urban platforms between cities and across national boundaries; d.) implications for a reconfiguration of urban citizenship; e.) new configurations of urban materialities in the digital platform era. We conclude with brief reflections on data-led urbanism in contemporary China.Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC

Social sustainability and residents' experiences in a new Chinese eco-city

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.The article argues for a “humanizing” research agenda on newly-built forms of eco-urbanism, such as eco-cities. Taking the example of the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City, China, the article focuses on urban social sustainability with a specific focus on the lived experiences of new residents of the newly-built eco-city. Drawing on Jane Jacobs' work on the spaces of the city, the article's focus on residents' experiences underlines the key importance of social sustainability when analysing new flagship urban projects, and highlights the need to consider the relational networks of lived experiences of the city as well as the visions and techno-social designs of planners, policymakers and corporate actors in the development of eco-city projects

Varieties of smart urbanism in the UK: discursive logics, the state, and local urban context

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this record.The paper analyses the varieties of smart urbanism to be found in the contemporary urban landscape in the UK. In so doing, it builds on and extends two currently dominant sets of critiques of the smart city: those that call into question its technocratic and top-down modes of governance, and those that describe the smart city as an empty signifier. The paper makes sense of the UK’s variegated local smart urban practices, by tracing the emergence of a national, state-led cultural economy of smart urbanism. Based on an analysis of smart city programmes in 34 UK cities, we identify two broad discursive logics through a national variation of smart urbanism is produced and performed. First, the invocation of crisis forms a discursive foundation on which place-specific logics are based. Second, a set of what we term variegated logics are differently combined to build on the ‘foundational story’ of crisis, in the construction of local smart agendas. We discuss three of these variegated logics: the city portrayed as technological simulacrum; the focus on specific sectoral activities; and a chameleonic tendency to envelop previous eco-urban agendas into smart urbanism. The critical questions raise by these UK-specific logics demonstrate the value of considering particular multi-scalar constellations of smart urbanism through a cultural economy lens

Getting Londoners on two wheels: a comparative approach analysing London’s potential pathways to a cycling transition

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.This article compares the current state of cycling in London to the Amsterdam cycling transition of the 1970s, applying the Multi-Level Perspective to identify potential pathways and obstacles to the wider adoption of the cycling niche in London. Our approach is two-pronged, consisting of a historical perspective to analyse the cycling transition in Amsterdam, and a policy analysis in contemporary London, based on semi-structured interviews with respondents involved in London’s cycling policy. We identify factors that reinforce cycling’s niche status in London, thus making the wider adoption of cycling more challenging than it was in Amsterdam. Based on our comparison, we also highlight policy, infrastructure and cultural changes that will aid in promoting a cycling transition in London