This paper provides an introduction to the smart city and engages with its idea and ideals
from a critical social science perspective. After setting out in brief the emergence of smart
cities and current key debates, we note a number of practical, political and normative
questions relating to citizenship, justice, and the public good that warrant examination. The
remainder of the paper provides an initial framing for engaging with these questions. The first
section details the dominant neoliberal conception and enactment of smart cities and how this
works to promote the interests of capital and state power and reshape governmentality. We
then detail some of the ethical issues associated with smart city technologies and initiatives.
Having set out some of the more troubling aspects of how social relations are produced
within smart cities, we then examine how citizens and citizenship have been conceived and
operationalised in the smart city to date. We then follow this with a discussion of social
justice and the smart city. In the final section, we explore the notion of the ‘right to the smart
city’ and how this might be used to recast the smart city in emancipatory and empowering
ways
