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The KNOWledge politics of experimentING with smart urbanism

Subject Area Human Geography
Empirical Social Research
Term from 2016 to 2020
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 278590555
 
Final Report Year 2020

Final Report Abstract

The KNOWING project studied the urban ‘knowledge politics’ involved in designing, applying and living urban experiments of digitally mediated practices in selected cities in five European countries: the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain and the UK. The overarching aim of the research project was to develop a sound theoretical and empirical understanding of how formal and informal smart urbanism experimentation is re-shaping urban knowledge politics in European cities. In international working groups, the project focused on core arenas of digitalization to the urban landscape: smart district development, citizen enrolment and engagement, mapping and monitoring the urban environment, smart mobility schemes and digital platforms. For each arena, experiences from a range of European cities were analysed comparatively to assess how far, and in what ways, the use of digital devices in practice is generating new knowledge – but also revealing knowledge gaps – about the city. The research demonstrated the huge significance of exclusivity/inclusivity and contestation/ accommodation as determining factors behind the failure or success of strategies to advance digital urbanism. Whether relating to ‘smart’ visions, ‘smart’ processes or ‘smart’ outcomes, the willingness and ability to acknowledge and enroll the rich variety of projects promoting digital technology to understand the city better is paramount. This is important not only to harness the knowledge generated by existing projects, but also to recognize the knowledge politics at play in smart city discourses and practices. Knowledge production and use is inherently political and the smart city – for all its packaging in terms of technical innovation and efficiency gains – is no exception. On the contrary, our research revealed striking instances of political capture, blindness and resistance in attempts to render the city smart. This can help explain the disconnection frequently observed between city-level strategies and project-level enactments of the digitalized city. One striking observation about the two German cities studied is how many initiatives advocating digital ways of knowing, using and governing the city are barely acknowledged in official smart city strategies. This applies in particular to projects that are run by citizens groups (e.g. hacker spaces), that address topics alien to off-the-peg smart city models (e.g. urban nature) and that advance political objectives at odds with mainstream smart urbanism (e.g. refugee housing platforms). The widespread existence of such ‘institutionally invisible’ initiatives in Berlin and Hamburg indicates that there is more to the digitalized city than meets the (conventional) eye. The ‘smart city’ is a bounded construct that blinds us to the rich diversity of digital urbanism existing in practice, but also an exclusive one that many proponents of digitalization find it hard to identify with. The future of digital urbanism will depend in no small part, our research argues, on the ability of all involved to acknowledge, support and engage with local initiatives currently beyond the pale of the ‘smart city’ discourse.

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