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Are you interested in whether smart city is a utopia or a neoliberal ideology?

Our summary today works with the article titled Smart cities: Utopia or neoliberal ideology from 2017 by Giuseppe Grossi and Daniela Pianezzi, published in the Cities journal. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see an investigation into the smart city concept’s values and ideas. This article presents that smart city is a neoliberal ideology and not a utopia through the example of the Italian city Genoa.

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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper. Stay tuned until because I will give you the 3 most important things and some questions which would be interesting to discuss with a special attention to Australian cities.

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The increasing diffusion of models, standards, and definitions of smart city creates ambiguity and makes it difficult to estimate to what extent the existing smart cities keep up with the expectations and the ideas clamed by the promoters of this paradigm. Overall, the IT dimension appears central to the smart city, and the advocates of this urban paradigm highlight the benefits resulting from the adoption of technologies, techniques and visions, granting the these are scientific objective, commonsensical and apolitical in nature, but there are many aspects and definitions.

A growing critical literature has countered these optimistic rhetoric and largely celebratory tones. Adopting a critical standpoint, this literature has analysed the smart city as an expression of a neoliberal and market-led restructuring process of the urban space. The literature has raised concerns about the growing role of private corporations in defining and making up the smart city, thus alternately labelling the smart city as a corporate smart city, private city, or an entrepreneurial city. Critical studies suggest that this business-driven development of smart city might result in a prioritization of business goals over social and economic ones, thus leading the social polarization and inequality. Therefore, this paper tries to clarify the characteristics and ideas underpinning the smart city vision and establish whether it is a utopia or neoliberal ideology.

The word utopia is from the Greek not and place words and it refers to an imaginary perfect place. In recent decades, the concept of concrete utopia has been used to define the smart city initiatives. On one hand, the advocates of this paradigm describe the smart city as a concrete utopia in an urban space at human scale. The description of smart city as a common vision that provides citizens, business, and institutions with a high-level goal on which to base potential actions reveals the eschatological character of this utopia. On the other hand, critical studies suggest that when translated into practice, the smart city utopia often conflicts with its aspirations. A disconnection exists between the smart city concept and the translation of public policies into practice. Thus, techno-utopian smart city solutions might become rhetorical devices mobilized to divert the attention away from the real problems of the citizenry.

The authors argue that a dialectic exists between utopia and ideology due to the inner connection of utopia to authority and control. The emergence of utopia over alternative visions fixes a specific moral order and might lead to the transformation of utopia into ideology, which is an imaginary transposition of the real conditions of existence. Ideology describes a negative sense of illusory self-understanding which helps a dominant class to sustain and reproduce its power and control. Ideologies have a practical impact on daily life insofar as they produce a collective image that reinforces existing systems of social domination while preventing the production of alternative imaginaries. This paper suggests that the smart city utopia is a fundamental facet of the neoliberal contemporary ideology.

Neoliberalism is a macro-logical concept difficult to outline due to its hybrid character. Indeed, neoliberalism is never found in a pure form, but it is always mediated by the historical, economic and social context in which it emerges. A contrast may then exist between neoliberal ideology and actual existing neoliberalism. Neoliberalism can assume the public goodness of privatisation, lean government, and deregulation through the implementation of competitive regimes of resource allocation. The value of competitiveness and the related managerial tool of performance measurement play a fundamental role in the neoliberal ideology, thus becoming a constitutive element of the smart city utopia. This paper focuses on the ways in which the assumptions underpinning the neoliberal ideology have influenced the formulation of the smart city utopia and its translation into practice.

The process of neoliberalization of the urban space has also led to the diffusion of networked forms of governance based upon public-private partnerships, new public management strategies, privatization and competitive contracting of municipal services. The governments are no longer called upon to govern, command and control but to steer. Meanwhile, the increasing concentration of urban power in the hands of a few political and business elites could lead to adoption of profit-oriented approaches. This neoliberal-based smart city utopia may lead to a privatisation of decision-making and exercise of power insulated from democratic accountability.

The authors chose Genoa with its smart city strategy for their case study. The smart city utopia emerged as an expression of Genoa’s urban renewal strategy in 2010. With much funding, public actors, business companies, and not-for-profit organisation were invited to join the Genoa Smart City Association or GSCA for short to contribute to the transformation of Genoa into a smart city. The mission of the GSCA is to rethink the concept of the city, pursuing the concept of a concrete utopia in an urban space at human scale. The rhetoric of smart city ideology is here fully deployed. An entrepreneurial ethos coupled with a celebration of competitiveness governs and orients the GSCA policies which reveals the legacy of the neoliberal view of the smart city programme. Smartness is identified with general concepts of innovation and with a substantial use of technologies – precisely those technologies which were provided by the actors involved in the policy making.

This utopian description of Genoa as a living lab serves to conceal another reality: that Genoa as a city subject to an indiscriminate urbanisation that has dramatically increased the geohydrological risk of the area, like landslides and floods. Despite the fact that climate change plays a key role with respect to geohydrological risks, the complete and irrational urbanisation of valley floors seems the most striking aspect. While technologies may help people in danger and emergency, they fail to provide the municipality with sound long-term preventive mechanisms that could collectively address the causes of the flood, such as poor urban planning. Genoa shows how the current dominance of supply-driven smart city solutions often result in smart city strategies that are disconnected from their social context and fail to tackle a city’s problems in a cohesive way.

The promoters of the smart city paradigm used the term utopia because of its symbolic power. Indeed, this term recalls the revolutionary and emancipative effort of oppressed groups. The paper suggests that, despite private corporations and cities promoting the smart city as a revolutionary utopia, this paradigm is an expression of the neoliberal ideology. The smart city utopia serves the interests of big multinational ICT companies while neglecting the need of political and not only technological answers to public and common interests. Thus the emphasis on fancy technological solutions risks diverting attention away from issues that require a long-term urban-planning based approach driven by the political and ethical willingness of municipalities. A democratic-inspired utopia is needed, and cities have a role in creating such utopia in enabling counter-discourses through a wider discursive engagement of citizens.

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What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up question? Let me know on Twitter at WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the transcripts and show notes are available! Additionally, I will highly appreciate if you consider subscribing to the podcast or on the website. I hope this was an interesting paper for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

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Finally, as the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. The paper suggests that, despite private corporations and cities promoting the smart city as a revolutionary utopia, this paradigm is an expression of the neoliberal ideology.
2. The emphasis on fancy technological solutions risks diverting attention away from issues that require a long-term urban-planning based approach driven by the political and ethical willingness of municipalities.
3. A democratic-inspired utopia is needed, and cities have a role in creating such utopia in enabling counter-discourses through a wider discursive engagement of citizens.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. What do you think about smart city: is it a utopia – an ideal future state, or a neoliberal ideology – a symbol from behind powerful actors can influence the city without much regard to the urban problems?
2. What do you think are the problems in your city which could use long-term urban planning?
3. How do you participate in and engage with decision-making and urban discourses in your city?

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