Cloudy landscapes: On the extended geography of smart urbanism. (December 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Fard, Ali
• Is Part Of: Telematics and informatics. Volume 55(2020)
• Publication Date: 2020-12
• Subjects: Smart urbanism -- The cloud -- Technological urbanism -- Media infrastructures -- Planetary urbanization -- Operational landscapes -- Smart cities -- Infrastructure -- Design; Telecommunication -- Periodicals; Computer networks -- Periodicals; Télécommunications -- Périodiques; Réseaux d'ordinateurs -- Périodiques; 384
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tele.2020.101450
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0736-5853

Abstract

Highlights: Projects of smart urbanism have so far been analyzed along city-centric lines. The visibility of smart cities obfuscates the extended geography of their operation. The study of this geography necessitates a hybrid spatial analytic lens. Smart urbanism can be re-contextualized within an uneven planetary landscape. This landscape of computing increasingly conforms to the spatial logics of the cloud. Abstract: The hypervisibility of the projects of smart urbanism in urban cores masks and obfuscates an extended geography of extraction, processing, storage, transmission, and control that underlies the ideologies, practices, and forms of smart cities. By adopting a hybrid analytical framework, assembled from recent work emerging from critical urban geography, media studies, and design, this paper argues for a spatial recontextualization of smart urbanism. Expanding the scope of urban analysis beyond cities and into the enabling geography of "the cloud, " this paper positions smart urbanism within an uneven and socio-technically constructed planetary landscape, to problematize and more effectively map the "where" of smart cities. As an initial grounding of this discussion, a typological categorization of the extended geography of smart urbanism identifies a number of conditions and avenues for further research.