Creating Smart-er Cities: An Overview

TLDR

The papers aim to move beyond self‑congratulatory claims and an over‑reliance on entrepreneurial approaches to defining smart cities. The paper provides an overview of what constitutes a smart city. It synthesizes definitions and insights from papers presented at the 2009 Trans‑national Conference on Creating Smart(er) Cities. The papers highlight major challenges to becoming smart, uncover what it means to be smart, and propose an alternative neo‑liberal roadmap grounded in critical knowledge and realistic expectations. The conference was part of SCRAN’s methodological inquiries funded by the European Commission’s Interreg North Sea IVB Program (see http://www.smartcities.info).

Abstract

Abstract The following offers an overview of what it means for cities to be "smart." It draws the supporting definitions and critical insights into smart cities from a series of papers presented at the 2009 Trans-national Conference on Creating Smart(er) Cities. What the papers all have in common is their desire to overcome the all too often self-congratulatory nature of the claims cities make to be smart and their over-reliance on a distinctively entrepreneurial route to smart cities. Individually, they serve to highlight the major challenges cities face in their drive to become smart. Collectively they begin to uncover what it means for cities to be smart. Together the papers offer an alternative route to smart cities laid down by those advocating a more neo-liberal roadmap, rooted in a critically aware knowledge-base and more realistic understanding of what it means for cities to be smart(er). Notes The Conference was organized as part of the methodological inquiries supporting the development of the Smart Cities Regional Academic Network (SCRAN) funded under the European Commission's Interreg North Sea IVB Program (for further information see: <http://www.smartcities.info>).