Everyday urbanisms and the importance of place: Exploring the elements of the emancipatory smart city

Introduction

The visual and technical narrative of the smart city represents a substantial departure from the messiness and textures of contemporary urban spaces. Of particular concern is how smart city promotional material travels across contexts and national frames with documented strategies speaking the language of ‘best practice’ and ‘replicable solutions’ (Joss et al., 2017). In this paper I engage the current smart city trend as an opportunity for meaningful engagement with contemporary urbanity. I essentially argue that marginal circumstances in cities, such as that experienced by many in the Global South and East, not only need to be at the forefront of smart urban solutions but that technology appropriation in these contexts provides opportunities for a deeper and more rounded understanding of smart urbanism in general. The aim of this paper is to make sense of smart urbanism as a performative discourse (McFarlane and Söderström, 2017). I use both terms ‘smart cities’ and ‘smart urbanism’, and am guided by Willis and Aurigi’s (2017) distinction in my use of these terms: whereas the smart city is often considered as a stand-alone entity that incorporates the technologies enabling functioning of the city and its administration, smart urbanism considers how the material, economic and social are enrolled in its continued unfolding. Thinking about how technology influences urban life on an ongoing basis, ‘… the city comes to be known through data, algorithms, modelling and a combination of visual and media channels’, as well as new ways of understanding and imagining the city (Marvin et al., 2016, in Willis and Aurigi, 2017: 42). This paper seeks to expand on the idea of smart urbanism by exploring how the interface between technology and livelihoods unfolds at the margins of contemporary urban life, addressing what Söderström and McFarlane refer to as ‘… little critical thinking around how digital technologies might practically become embedded in the already existing worlds of urban life’ (Willis and Aurigi, 2017: 313).

The growing smart city literature presents many meaningful entry points for doing so; the emphasis on its neoliberal underbelly (Hollands, 2008), the concerns with data-driven urbanism that represents policy agendas despite claims to scientific rationality (Kitchin, 2014; Söderström et al., 2014) and the contrasts between the experimentation that smart city projects are part of, and more strategic city-planning and management (Cowley and Caprotti, 2019). Datta’s (2019) work on smart city strategies in India raises important questions about citizenship and displacement, and fascinating insights into how smart city visions rely on nostalgia to forge a way into the future. In this piece I engage technology as infrastructure, as the material manifestation of connection. It also expands on the notion of smart urbanism by offering a livelihood-centred view that sees technology appropriation as the driving force of smart urbanism, rather than the material elements and their algorithmic interpretations.

This paper unfolds in three parts. The first is essentially a review of literature on smart city claims in relation to urban problem solving. The intention is to uncover gaps in debates that relate to smart urbanism and cities in marginal settings but how these relate to urban marginality in general. The second part builds on recent work on some of the relational trends in urban thinking, incorporating postcolonial science and technology studies (STS), in arguing for a conceptual lens that operationalises the notion of studying the city as a socio-technical construct, rather than the sum of its material and human parts, expanded upon by a discussion of the notion of assemblage. In the final part of the paper I examine two empirical vignettes of technology mediation in two different African contexts to explore what such a frame could mean. Empirical vignettes (based on fieldwork documented in detail elsewhere) are used to illustrate conceptual points (for similar approaches see: Furlong, 2011; Lawhon et al., 2014). These examples, together with a review of recent literature in political ecology and STS, are used to inform a localised, relational agenda for the study of smart urbanism.

Contemporary urbanism and the smart city

The idea of the smart city has become a current vessel for encapsulating the many dimensions of the relationship between technology and cities. This is a continuation of a theme where the general assumption in urban planning history has been that technological experimentation enables efficiency and progress. The logic that innovation enables social development is also very present in literature on information and communication technology (ICT) in developing countries. It speaks to a temporal linearity that is deemed inevitable, where developing countries cannot be ‘left behind’ (Graham, 2008). Neoliberal expectations of technological diffusion influence policy implementation (Kleine, 2009: 181). Contemporary iterations of the ICT for Development (ICT4D) paradigm have been more mindful of the interface between capacity and objectives, however. Moving from a supply-driven model to more demand-centred approaches frames the poor as potential innovators, not just passive consumers (Heeks, 2008) with a focus on local practices (Krishna and Walsham, 2005). Juxtaposing the promise of technology with socio-economic hardship is a natural tendency in promoting technology-inspired development projects, as shown in Philip et al.’s (2012) discussion of MIT’s One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project, where: ‘Complex and heterogeneous socioeconomic situations are universalised into a unitary category: the underdeveloped child’ (Philip et al., 2012: 5). The authors argue for a more nuanced approach to technology transfer initiatives that are mindful of cultural and historical inputs into the shaping, design and operationalisation of computing initiatives in marginalised spaces (Philip et al., 2012).

Marvin et al. (2015) make a valid point in highlighting the need for more work on smart urbanism in the Global South, but fortunately an encouraging body of literature departs from developmentalist claims found in early ICT4D literature. Datta’s (2015) work on India provides an eloquent study of how state-led smart initiatives in India lead to greater inequality, raise questions about citizenship (Datta, 2018) and probe the discourse strategies where the nostalgic past is implicated in the digital future (Datta, 2019). Smart city initiatives are seldom divorced from broader policy goals and sometimes perpetuate spatial splintering, simply following established investment patterns (Odendaal, 2011). This is not much different from what Wiig (2015) finds in his work on Philadelphia, where he juxtaposes the promises of transformative digital change, promised by the smart city rhetoric, with actual outcomes. The rhetoric is more about selling a city in the global economy, he concludes, than affecting meaningful change. Work on South Africa (Odendaal, 2003, 2011) and Kenya (Guma, 2019) shows that ICT strategies form part of discourse assemblages that speak to economic prosperity, the developmentalist state and global positioning. In Asia, the policy storyline is closely tied to infrastructure transitions and efficiency, through management practices (Beijing), operationalising smart energy systems (Singapore) or smart waste disposal (Hong Kong) revealing a modernisation discourse tied to technology-led efficiency (Joss et al., 2019).

How smart is deployed to address the inadequacies of the state is a key purveyor of its potential to transform society; in India the apparent transparency enabled through e-governance, the accountability enabled through digitally enhanced information-sharing in real time, imbues smart cities with an ethical position (Datta, 2018). Datta’s work on futuring as a core state strategy in selling the smart city fantasy looks to the past also. She takes this a step further, however, in providing insights into how that vision of the future is embedded in deepening the discourse relationship between nationhood and technology; and its connections to heritage and the past (Datta, 2018). The neoliberal goal of ‘minimum government, maximum governance’ does indeed raise concerns about corporate control of state governance (Datta, 2018). Yet, what Datta found in her research is the ever-present gap between the totalising discourse and the uncertainties and confusion on the ground. Much like Wiig found in his work on Philadelphia, there is a chasm between policy promises and actual outcomes. Not only does the smart city rhetoric make empty promises in theory but in policy practices also. The conceptual lesson is to open a space for research that scratches hard enough to reveal the inconsistencies, contradictions and frustrations embedded in practice.

Not only are smart city ideas enrolled into policy discourses but the relationships between smart technologies and other service infrastructures are also blurring, allowing for a broader array of actors to enter the city governance space. Together with the usual off-line mechanics of activism, the arsenal of digital media available for information dissemination and publicity have been well harnessed towards social justice in South African cities, for example (Mitchell and Odendaal, 2015; Odendaal, 2015). Social media enable connection and dissemination, often underpinning these dissension practices that are ‘living indicators’ (Kaika, 2017) of urban life at the margins; the real smart solutions and real social innovation embedded in dissension practices.

Besides civil society activity, the corporate landscape of telecommunications provides opportunities for a diversity of small-scale actors to become part of the ICT market and beyond. That in itself has development implications, but also leads to assemblage configurations that allow for a myriad of actors and agencies to collaborate. Guma’s (2019) work on Nairobi examines the spatial, social and political dynamics of such assemblages. Approaching Nairobi (the Silicon Savannah) as a testbed for innovation, he uncovers the political contingencies and contestations that emerge from the use of ICT tools in mediating water and electricity supply. Guma’s work is significant in that it draws on Simone’s (2010) notion of ‘people as infrastructure’ in uncovering the intricacies of infrastructure assemblages. In particular, he shows how residents recalibrate and repurpose technology inputs into service provision to serve their needs. He makes an important point about the dynamics of structure – spatial fragmentation and inequality – and the micro-politics of infrastructure bricolage in bridging the gap between service providers and residents (Simone, 2010: 2342). This is not a story of straightforward empowerment and addressing inequality. Much like Odendaal (2011) found in her study of ICT distribution in Durban, South Africa, access patterns tend to echo private investment strategies, not the public goals of equitable access. Whilst references to smart cities might celebrate large-scale innovation and technical solutions to intractable spatial problems, infrastructure-led approaches seldom deliver on these promises.

The spatial dimension of ICT-enhanced development is important. The foregrounding of space was a feature of early smart/digital city debates when debates on technology and cities first manifested in the late 1990s (see Aurigi and Willis, 2017, for an eloquent overview of the evolution of the smart city idea). The ‘death of distance’ idea, popularised by journalist Frances Cairncross in her book of the same title (1997), promised a frictionless, ‘placeless’ world as a consequence of globalisation and the widespread availability of advanced communication and transportation technology (Aurigi and Willis, 2017). Later, Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin explored just how selective and exclusionary such a world can be, in Splintering Urbanism (2001). The manifestation of landscapes of premium networked spaces and a forgotten ‘in-between’ area where infrastructure does not necessarily connect but divides is a feature of increasing ‘splintering urbanism’ (Graham and Marvin, 2001). I would argue that a version of this is discernible in the smart city visions touted for cities in Africa, referred to by Watson (2014) as the African urban fantasy phenomenon, inspired by the development of master-planned communities in Songdo and Masdar. Such designs for new satellite cities bear no relationship to the ‘real’ city. I would take this point further in saying that it pays little tribute to the ‘real smart city’.

Spatial constraints do not simply disappear with broadened technology access but co-exist with cyber-space in a hybrid form (Graham, 2008) that is more relational than Cartesian (Odendaal, 2014). Some places remain isolated and under-serviced; what new technologies offer is access to networked spaces that connect. Technology is not enough to access those networked spaces, however; they have to be mediated through livelihood strategies and socio-economic appropriation (Guma, 2019; Odendaal, 2011). Importantly, the need to consider smart technologies together with other utilities is essential to understanding smart urbanism. In order to uncover the many inputs that constitute smart urbanism, ICT can no longer be considered in isolation. The smart city is an idealised amalgamation of data, pipes, ducts and people. Smart urbanism refers to the ways through which these have become increasingly intertwined in our lives and in city governance and management processes. To uncover how these processes can be tweaked, what opportunities they present for more inclusive cities and what they mean for urbanism in general, the aim of provincialising smart city discourses makes sense. Contemporary urbanism, with its infrastructural antecedents, is simply too diverse and layered to conform to a single definition of smart. Provincialising is not about rejecting Western/Northern debates, or only embracing Global South/Eastern experiences (Chakrabarty, 2007, in Lawhon et al., 2014). It opens up analyses to how a phenomenon is tied to and generated by place, with a broader range of urban experiences. It is a sensibility, or what Lawhon et al. (2014: 505) describe as ‘an epistemological location, rather than a geographical container’. In the next section of this paper I refer to literature informed by science and technology studies (STS) as well as work on African urbanism to explore what such an approach could be.

The socio-technical lens on cities and infrastructure

Science and technology studies (STS) enable a socio-technical gaze that allows for infrastructure to be considered in relation to socio-geographical context. More is needed, however, on how infrastructure networks can be manipulated by people in a more reciprocal view on the play between material and human agency. Furlong (2011) explores the potential malleability of socio-technical networks in Canada where she refers specifically to mediating technologies: small devices that are incorporated into infrastructure networks to enable efficiency. By considering how such technologies lead to a rework of the relationship between user, social, economic and institutional context, Furlong supports Summerton’s view that small tweaks to infrastructure systems can lead to incremental changes ultimately leading to transition (Summerton, 1994, in Furlong, 2011). In other words, mediating technologies where users are purposefully enrolled in monitoring and management can lead to change in socio-technical systems (Furlong, 2011: 463). In their formulation of the notion of ‘heterogeneous infrastructure configurations’, Lawhon et al. (2018) argue for an analysis that considers the material elements of infrastructural systems in relation to socio-technical configurations with embedded risks and power relations. Heterogeneity refers to a spectrum of material artefacts, uses and users enrolled into a dynamic configuration (Lawhon et al., 2018). Continued methods of repair, assembly and creation lead to incremental changes that could potentially be revolutionary (Summerton, 1994, in Lawhon et al., 2018).

Lawhon et al. (2018) draw mainly from African cases in their discussions, whereas Furlong (2011) is informed by her research in Canada. The conceptual symmetry afforded to human and material agency is significant. Writing under the guise of postcolonial STS, Warwick Anderson argues for an analytical symmetry afforded to the ‘metropole’ and ‘post-colony’ in uncovering how technoscience is productive of the provincialising of modernity: ‘… a representation of alternative modernities’ (Anderson, 2002: 643). Focusing on the ‘“situatedness” of technoscience, as simultaneous sites of negation, borrowing and exchange’ (Anderson, 2002: 651), enables a deeply contextual reading of the interface between human and material agency. Methodologically it implies acceptance of contingency and flux. This entails an interrogation of the centre along with the periphery, accepting that the local is part of a series of connections through persons, practices and artefacts (Anderson, 2002: 652). The global and local are everywhere and articulated in accordance with the nature of practices and place.

One way through which ‘situatedness’ can be probed in socio-technical relations is through understanding of the everyday practices of urbanites as they interface with infrastructure. A focus on everyday practices serves as conceptual inversion and foregrounds people as infrastructure (Lawhon et al., 2014; Simone, 2010). Literature on southern and African urbanism (Parnell and Pieterse, 2016; Pieterse, 2014) subverts the notion that cities in the South, in Africa, are simply in the making, deficient in relation to an idealised notion of the optimal city. Understanding how cities, dominated by informality and infrastructure backlogs, truly function has practical implications. Developing an infrastructure that enables economic production demands a productive engagement with the relations that define trade and exchange of goods and services. In the African context, these relations are perhaps less predictable where large numbers of people lack access to employment, social amenities and basic services. In many cases livelihoods entail mobility: between cities, between the rural and urban, and often across borders (Simone, 2010). These circuits rarely coincide with the spatial delineations of conventional infrastructural networks. The implications are twofold. Existing service infrastructural potential is not maximised to effectively facilitate employment and economic growth and, second, misguided infrastructure investments may constrain mobility and livelihoods. ‘This is more than simply building new roads, rails, power lines and telecommunications. It is more than a matter of constructing synergies between the physical, the institutional, the economic and the informational’ (Simone, 2010: 29).

Maximising capacity through digital technology is dependent on how financial flows and economic production are facilitated. Contrary to what the idea of the comprehensive smart city solution might suggest, the problem is that these relations are not necessarily tied to place, making centralised planning difficult. What emerges is a need to gain insight into how networks are constructed and maintained and how that ties in with how technology is appropriated. So not only is the question how to make communication infrastructure more accessible but also how it can do more than it already does, in concert with human agency and other material inputs. What the more recent literature on STS suggests is that the situatedness of these milieus requires deeper understanding (Anderson, 2002; Philip et al., 2012) and that the heterogeneous assemblages that emerge in well-resourced spaces (Furlong, 2011) as well as in cities of the Global South (Guma, 2019; Lawhon et al., 2018) show that human ingenuity, reinvention at the margins and continued appropriation, require a lens that sees urban change as iterative and experimental. Spaces for learning and creativity can then be uncovered. Such micro-level ‘socio-technical niches’ encompass small networks of actors that add new technologies to the agenda, promoting innovations and novel technological developments. This may reveal configurations of actors hitherto unexplored in studies of technology and infrastructure transition. How social learning from niches can be applied at the city scale to help reshape the existing infrastructure regime is a challenge that requires a multi-scalar perspective that is mindful of the connections necessary for survival (Swilling et al., 2013: 14). The aim is to not only uncover the actors, institutions, infrastructures affecting beneficial change but also the relations between them. It is through such relations that agencies emerge.

Understanding socio-technical constellations through a relational lens

Unravelling the agency that emerges from the interface between material and human actors in the urban domain requires conceptual vehicles that are profoundly relational. In thinking about smart urbanism, the challenge is to reveal the touch points between technology and human agency. Literature on assemblage thinking in urban studies is useful here in that it lays emphasis on the heterogeneous qualities of networks of human and non-human actors: ‘… a multiplicity of processes of becoming, affixing sociotechnical networks, hybrid collectives and alternative topologies’ (Farías and Bender, 2010: 2). The open-ended nature of heterogeneous relations speaks to the notion of emergence and contingency (Anderson and McFarlane, 2011: 124), thus creating opportunities for analysing smart cities ‘in the making’ rather than ‘clean slate’ approaches. Rather than a grand theory, assemblage thinking represents an approach, a lens that allows for the material as well as the nascent and dynamic properties of relations to surface. It allows for agency to emerge in unexpected places. I would argue that such empirical uncovering provides a vehicle for gaining insights into context and the uniqueness of place in the appropriation of digital technologies.

There are two entry points for a discussion on assemblage. One is the consideration of connections between human and non-human actors in the ongoing negotiation of access to the city. The second relates to learning and innovation. The notion of assemblage as verb, as descriptor of a process rather than an outcome, leaves conceptual space for uncovering relations that are becoming, in the process of establishing rules and parameters in the ongoing negotiation of contemporary urban spaces. It allows for analysis of smart practices at the interface of technology and livelihoods.

The emphasis on the open-ended nature of assemblage focuses attention on the contingency and temporality of relations across space; ‘… assemblage connotes emergence rather than resultant formation’ (Anderson and McFarlane, 2011: 125). Assemblage thinking shares similarities with actor-network theory in that participants are defined by the roles they take on in these constellations. Heterogeneous materials can be diverse yet engage into associations that, albeit temporary, can still be read as a composite (Anderson and McFarlane, 2011). This conceptual similarity also contains one of the distinctions between the two: the emphasis with assemblage thinking is on how fluid these relations are as their positionality is reconstituted on an ongoing basis (McFarlane, 2010). Agency is not determined by the position of the actor in the network since positionality can change, territories claimed as elements in the network come together and pull apart. The terms of assemblage can change due to effects outside its configuration. Furthermore, agency is uncovered as part of the network but also through insight into the actual components and what motivates them – their roles are not prescribed by their positionality in the network alone (McFarlane, 2010). Relations between human and non-human actors can change.

Appropriation of artefacts to suit and enhance livelihoods, for example, means that these relations shift and are reinvented on an ongoing basis, sometimes leading to broader change as examined in the use of technology to enable advocacy by Odendaal (2011). McFarlane argues that the origins of assemblage thinking are inherently political. Deleuze’s coining of the term sought an engagement with the potential of the left organising and networking towards meaningful change; a ‘political subjectivity’ that could lead to transformation (McFarlane, 2011a: 205). Some critical urban theorists contest this view as ontologically weak, however. The significance of context and structure is underemphasised and undermines the use of assemblage thinking as an analytical tool in urban studies (Brenner et al., 2011). Underplaying socio-political, institutional and economic frames weakens the explanatory power of assemblage thinking by not being specific about what to be critical of (Brenner et al., 2011). Referred to as a naïve objectivism, by not interrogating the structural context of assemblage, it runs the risk of not addressing the normative concerns of critical urban theory suffering from ‘conceptual quietude’ (Brenner et al., 2011: 238).

The oft-portrayed spectre of inequality and violence in marginalised urban areas demands consideration of normative concerns. The question is: could an assemblage lens avail us with a means to better understand this situation and how we might intervene? The problem with structural definitions is that the limits to the extent of the human agency that evolves and thrives in the midst of, and in spite of, divisive political economies is either acknowledged or revealed; the poor’s ‘… contributions to remaking notions of urban life’ (Simone, 2011: 357). The tapestry of agency that comprises urban life is such that progressive action can manifest at ‘… multiple surfaces of exposure and articulation’ (Simone, 2011: 358). Greater insights into the processes of assemblage formation are by nature contextual as the constituents of such collective agency are uncovered and explained within the context of place. It allows for a recursive uncovering of structure and agency. This speaks to constellations of power and the local workings of politics, as the vestiges of inequality are battled, manipulated and uncovered (McFarlane, 2011a).

The technological power of material artefacts can be appropriated in constructive ways, especially when matched with livelihood strategies (Odendaal, 2011). ‘Smart urbanism is a loosely connected set of confluences between data, digital technologies and urban sites and processes’ (McFarlane and Söderström, 2017: 314) yet is also deeply embedded in the political economy of regions and cities, as shown by Joss et al. (2017) in their research on global smart city discourses. A core aspect of the splintering urbanism thesis relates to the changing nature of who provides, who pays and who benefits in the production of space. Political agendas not only drive the funding and provision of infrastructure but also its prioritisation. Political power ‘from above’ then translates into how elites distribute the benefits of investment in space (McFarlane and Rutherford, 2008). How these definitions and standards are assembled into immutable frames that drive infrastructure investment priorities can be, argues Star (2010), uncovered through ethnography of infrastructure that uncovers the anthropological dimensions of standards formation.

Whilst Star’s ideas were not specifically related to the smart city, standardised notions of what a smart city is, complete with the development codes and performance criteria, are becoming increasingly ubiquitous. The selective politics of codes and standards extends also to data-driven urbanism. Reducing and oversimplifying complex relationships into manageable variables decontextualises the city and assumes replicability across places. Benchmarking across cities (and countries) is an understandable trend in the ongoing ‘worlding’ of cities (McCann et al., 2013), but runs the risk of duplicating pre-packaged urban ‘solutions’ based on an analysis that is not mindful of the uniqueness of place. The ‘cut and paste’ urbanism that permeates smart city visions provides evidence of that. Together with longitudinal analysis, it assumes that patterns and trends can be redirected through focused intervention and fails to recognise endemic, systemic urban processes that require attention.

A relational approach is concerned with a politics of hope, of possibility, and the process of reworking relations may illustrate how different things could be (McFarlane, 2011a: 211). The purpose of research, then, is to uncover and properly describe these relations, in context. Whilst actor-network theory (ANT) recommends following an actor-network in determining translation processes, uncovering mutable and immutable mobiles implicit in circumscribing relations, assemblage thinking incorporates the histories behind those relations. The emphasis on ‘becoming’ is not only tied to ‘what could be?’ but also on ‘what became?’ The focus on emergence denotes a temporal dimension that enables insight into policy change and responses to its impacts – the ‘socio-material transformation’ described by McFarlane (2011a). The sensibility that entails symmetry in the analysis of material and human agency in untangling assemblages is a contribution that ANT makes in this regard.

Untangling these relations through ‘thick description’ leads the researcher to ‘… encounter emergent groups, multiple lay-expert knowledge forms, programmes of action, valuation regimes, fluid topologies’ (Farías, 2011: 367). The emphasis on the empirical also enables deep contextual inquiry. That in itself is political: regime change is about continuous questioning (Farías, 2011). Furthermore, as an ‘empirical tracing of how it is that materials come to matter …’ (McFarlane, 2011b: 734) infrastructural change and technology innovation can be tracked from above and below. The learning that informs and emanates from the appropriation of technological artefacts could then be used more broadly. The ‘sociomaterial practice of learning in groups’ (McFarlane, 2011b: 63) could potentially yield new practices and political influence.

In his article, McFarlane (2011b) examines the work of Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI) in India, South Africa and Vietnam as self-governing methods of creating ‘translocal spaces’ of practices that can be harnessed to influence service delivery. The SDI practice of using savings to augment or leverage public spending on services, self-enumeration and community mapping as well as reimagining housing options through construction of scale models speaks to the value of experiential expertise and horizontal learning in the face of neglect, inaction or oppression. A home-grown census, or enumerations, as termed by the organisation, allows for ‘the simultaneous process of spatial discovery and creation …’ (McFarlane, 2011b), allowing for a reimagining of spatial arrangements and delivery of the services that influence such ordering. It is particularly important for groups with no access to land, such as pavement dwellers in Indian cities, where the invisible is made visible through the self-governing practice of self-enumeration. Creating this visibility to policy makers and officials then through broader information dissemination and documentation entails the appropriation of technologies used by engineers and planners to influence and coerce. Learning assemblages create the knowledge capital for political action.

Employing self-generated data to organise and portray demand for services is often used as a means to stop relocations (Huchzermeyer, 2009). The global dissemination of SDI practice through its alliances is impressive, but Huchzermeyer (2009) questions its efficacy in challenging and influencing city/town priorities in infrastructure distribution and spending. Enabling such change no doubt requires some intervention in city officialdom and politics. Processes of self-enumeration and mapping empower the invisible in the face of possible evictions or state inaction (Huchzermeyer, 2009) and can find political expression through local alliances and mobilisation.

What does contemporary smart urbanism really look like? Empirical vignettes from two African cities

When using a socio-technical lens to consider smart urbanism, many layers of human–material interactions evolve, indicative of spatial practices that bridge traditional binaries of public/private and social/technical. If we were to distinguish between the smart city and smart urbanism, one that is data-driven and accessible to a broad populace, it raises the question: how can this translate into transformative urban practice that is cognisant of local place? How do the emerging practices of the ‘real’ smart city interface with popular conceptions and offer a more contextualised and hopeful alternative? Exploring the invisible and marginalised constituents of contemporary cities is essential to a nuanced understanding of contemporary urbanism. The following section explores two such examples. The first, MapKibera, is an online and analogue geographic documentation initiative in Nairobi, Kenya. Documentation of this example is based upon an interview with staff driving the initiative, a site visit, as well as perusal of project documentation and published work. The second example is situated in Cape Town, South Africa, and concerns a social housing activist campaign, documented through social media analysis and perusal of related documentation. The comparative dimension relates to context, the immediate conditions that contribute to these two initiatives and the ways through which technology and social media are used to respond to marginal circumstances.

Conclusion

In this paper, I responded to the call for exploring what provincialising the smart city could look like. Rather than focus on the smart city as a standalone entity, I engaged the notion of smart urbanism as a continuous process of emergence and remaking. Through review of literature on relational accounts of infrastructure appropriation, postcolonial STS and an account of smart practices, I have provided a granular reading of socio-technical change. The overarching aim was to turn the conventional idea of the smart city, as a ‘city in a box’ solution to complex socio-economic problems, on its head by offering a more grounded alternative that celebrates the interpretations of place, expressed in local appropriations of technology.

In shaping this argument, smart city claims in relation to actual outcomes were discussed, followed by a broadening of the discussion to consider recent work on other forms of infrastructure. The focus on heterogeneity, postcolonial readings of technoscience and everyday urbanisms was necessary to explore the role of place and human agency in ongoing socio-technical change. Understanding the complexity of material–human entanglements necessitated a discussion of the assemblage idea to explore more thoroughly what such interactions can facilitate and create. The two empirical vignettes were intended to provide material to explore this. In conclusion, this paper provides conceptual suggestions towards provincialising the smart city discourse by illustrating the value of a lens that incorporates heterogeneity, relationality and the vestiges of place. This allows for a number of important conceptual spaces to open up.

The first is a reading of power that departs from hegemonic representations of the smart city. Power is diffuse and relational (Lawhon et al., 2014: 508). Whilst Marxist analysis of infrastructure and society may see the articulation of spatial exclusion with infrastructure provision as a manifestation of unequal power relations, attention to the contingency of technology and the potential range of relationships produced by a less centralised view of smart deployment access provides a more hopeful alternative. Making the invisible visible is an act of power, of challenging official definitions of who counts or, indeed, what exists. Ndifuna Ukwazi’s campaign in Cape Town shows how the use of GIS in challenging the city discourse on inclusionary housing, together with the ongoing social media efforts to personalise the experiences of the urban poor, led to changes in the city’s inclusionary housing policy. In Nairobi, MapKibera enables greater legibility in the area, spatial literacy and identification, which facilitates functional integration and greater legibility for residents.

Philip et al. (2012) argue that the cultural dynamics of place are understudied in STS whilst Furlong (2011) contends that, as an approach, it tends to privilege the technical at the expense of the more nuanced dynamics of socio-political processes. The ‘local’ can be rendered quite abstract, devoid of geographic and temporal specificity (Philip et al., 2012). Engaging the everyday modalities of the appropriation of technology requires an engagement with messiness. Simone (2011) calls for a surfacing of what may undermine, change, alter or simply ignore notions of order and efficiency, not as responses to hardships but as co-contributors to contemporary frames of urban life. The land uses mapped by MapKibera, the stories documented by Ndifuna Ukwazi, do not conform to conventional rules and urban codes, but by asserting the technological power to map, document and engage, both organisations claim space for that which exists outside the norm.

Stories of technology appropriations are hybrid, multidimensional and sometimes take place over years and across boundaries. New modes of analysis and new critiques (Anderson, 2002) emerge from the consideration of the relationship between technology and society as a process of coproduction of culture, economic processes and group identities that undermine the notion of smart as new and revolutionary, but consider it rather as another ingredient in the ongoing adventure of contemporary urbanism.