Exposing smart cities and eco-cities: Frankenstein urbanism and the sustainability challenges of the experimental city

Introduction

As noted by several scholars, in recent years, urban experimentation has become a popular way to address issues of sustainability in cities, by developing alternative models of urbanisation (Bulkeley and Castán Broto, 2013; Bulkeley et al., 2014; Caprotti and Cowley, 2016a; Evans et al., 2016; Karvonen and van Heur, 2014). The argument made by those in favour of urban experiments is that current models of city-making are flawed and, in the long run, unsustainable: they are responsible for the majority of global socio-environmental issues (such as climate change and resource scarcity) and have to be replaced. Echoing such claim, over the last decade, several, supposedly alternative models of urban development have emerged, contending to possess the formula for a sustainable urbanism. To date, as evidenced by a number of studies, the two most popular typologies of experimental urbanism in the world are the smart city and the eco-city which count thousands of initiatives across different geographical spaces (Aina, 2017; Caprotti, 2014; Caprotti and Cowley, 2016b; Cugurullo, 2016a; De Jong et al., 2015; Joss et al., 2011; Rapoport, 2014; Trencher and Karvonen, 2017; Wu et al., 2017; Yin et al., 2015).

Theoretically, the two models approach sustainability from different perspectives. While the eco-city ideal, as originally envisioned by Register (1987, 2006), focuses on ecology and on finding a balance between human societies and ecosystems via urban design and behavioural change, the smart-city movement relies on information technology to produce data on how the city operates, particularly in terms of energy (production, distribution and consumption) and transport, and uses it to decrease the costs and waste that urban living generates (Calzada and Cobo, 2015; Caragliu et al, 2011; Garau et al., 2016; Hashem et al., 2016; Kitchin, 2014; Kummitha and Crutzen, 2017; Luque-Ayala and Marvin, 2015; McNeill, 2015; Mosannenzadeh et al., 2017; Neirotti et al., 2014; Vanolo, 2014; Viitanen and Kingston, 2014). In practice, however, actually existing smart and eco-city projects share numerous traits and, despite bearing different labels, they tend to be the product of the same pro-economic growth matrix. Examining a variety of case studies from different geographical spaces, scholars have shown that alleged smart cities and eco-cities (a) are far from their philosophical ideals, (b) they rarely innovate and instead replicate traditional capitalist strategies of urbanisation, and (c) they seldom keep their promises of sustainability (Taylor Buck and While, 2017; Caprotti, 2016; Chang and Sheppard, 2013; Colding and Barthel, 2017; Cugurullo, 2013a; Datta, 2015; March and Ribera-Fumaz, 2016; Rapoport and Hult, 2017; Rosol et al., 2017; Wiig, 2016). This paper is situated precisely in this strand of critical urban research committed to ‘revealing the gaps between ideas and realities in individual cases’ of smart and eco-city projects (Chang, 2017: 3). It complements the above body of work, by focusing on an aspect of urban experiments which, to date, has received little attention: the implementation of the master plan and, more specifically, the extent to which so-called smart and eco-cities are built by methodically following a comprehensive plan of action, as their developers claim.

One of the arguments made by developers, stakeholders and advocates of projects for smart cities and eco-cities is that such initiatives are different and alternative, inasmuch as they are developed and implemented following a detailed master plan in a systematic manner. The assumption is that there is a scientific approach to urbanisation, based on a holistic and rigorous plan of action which shapes the entire city, homogeneously, making it sustainable. In the literature, for example, according to Zygiaris (2013: 225), ‘Barcelona’s smart planning follows a top–down design approach, which ensures a comprehensive smart city plan’, while for Washburn et al. (2009: 9), Masdar City and Songdo ‘have the luxury of incorporating the Smart City vision in its entirety.’ In a similar vein, a number of cities are promoting themselves, in the media, as the locus of large-scale, methodical experimentations whose official target is the city and its society as a whole. Barcelona, for instance, is described as a smart city which ‘improves quality of life for its citizens across the whole society’ (Barcelona City Council, 2017: no page). Milano is considered smart as its regeneration scheme ‘leads to a better quality of life through effective, accessible and intelligent tools aimed at the optimisation of resources for all citizens’ (Milano Smart City, 2017: no page). Vienna appears to approach smart urbanism ‘systematically’ and ‘through comprehensive innovation’ to provide ‘the best quality of life for all inhabitants’ (Smart City Wien, 2017: no page). Masdar City is portrayed as an ‘eco-city, greenprint for the city of the future’ because of ‘innovative sustainable development and a single vision of sustainability engineered on a grand scale’ (Masdar Initiative, 2017a: no page).

Problematically, what this ontological approach denotes is an understanding of smart and eco-city projects as organic urban experiments shaped by a homogeneous vision of the sustainable city. Moreover, the terminology through which the cities subject to experimentation, are portrayed in the literature and in the media by means of singular nouns, such as city, project and initiative, denoting one thing, hides the fragmentation, heterogeneity and chaos (intended as a condition of disorder characterised by a lack of regular, methodical arrangement) that, as this paper argues, can be found at the very foundation of alleged experimental cities. Far from being a cohesive whole, the same initiative is rolled out across different scales ranging from the individual to the region, generates different impacts in different spaces and, above all, features different components (see, also, Coletta et al., 2017; Cowley et al., 2017; Cugurullo, 2016b; Ferraris et al., 2017; Gardner and Hespanhol, 2017; Joss et al., 2017; Leszczynski, 2016; Shelton et al., 2015; van Winden and van den Buuse, 2017). This study seeks to break the aura of singularity, i.e. the quality of being singular, surrounding the two most popular types of urban experiments, smart cities and eco-cites, by unpacking the many incongruous elements that compose them. It shows that smart and eco-city initiatives are not homogeneous experiments, but rather fragmented projects made up of a plethora of sub-projects which do not act in concert. Ultimately, the paper contends that the disorganic nature of so-called smart cities and eco-cities is one of the main reasons why such initiatives often fail to realise their sustainability potential, creating spaces which foster social injustice and biodiversity loss.

These claims are supported empirically through the analysis of two case studies: Masdar City in Abu Dhabi as an example of a new eco-city project, and Hong Kong as an instance of a large-scale smart-city initiative. The rationale behind the choice of Masdar City and Hong Kong is twofold. The paper does not aim to offer a comparative analysis, but rather an examination of the fragmentary nature of urban experiments, first in the two mainstream typologies of experimental urbanism (eco-cities and smart cities) and second in the two main types of built environment (new cities and existing settlements). Theoretically, the paper is framed by the concept of urban experimentation and seeks to contribute to contemporary debates in the field of experimental urbanism, by developing the theory of Frankenstein urbanism whose dynamics are illustrated by using Mary Shelley’s novel as a metaphor for unsuccessful experiments generated by the forced union of different, incongruous parts.

Given the limitations that are intrinsic to case-study research, the objective here is not to provide a one-size-fits-all conceptual framework. The following argument is animated by a philosophy of research akin to what Peck (2016, 2017) defines as conjunctural urbanism. The paper understands and approaches the fragmentation that characterises smart and eco-city projects, first as part of a broader and much older trend in urban development, inasmuch as, across history, cities have constantly grown as fragmented artefacts shaped by different and often colliding forces (a condition that has become even more evident in recent times with the diffusion of neoliberal urban agendas); second, as a situated and diverse phenomenon connected to the specificity of the single case studies. Therefore, by approaching the subject of inquiry as the interconnection or conjuncture of these two dimensions, the paper seeks to offer only a ‘midlevel formulation’ whose explanatory power remains open and revisable (Peck, 2016: 16).

In the next section, before turning to the cases of Masdar City and Hong Kong, the paper contextualises the two case studies, by drawing upon literature on experimental urbanism and placing it, for the first time, in conversation with studies in urban history on the chronic fragmentation of urbanisation. The argument is that the city has always been a site of conflicting interests and powers and, across times and spaces, the built environment has reflected the diversity of urban politics via physically diverse urban spaces. How this diversity impacts on the sustainability potential of projects for smart cities and eco-cities and what can be done to mitigate the issues that this condition generates, represent the crux of the matter for a sustainable urbanism and the key questions that the paper seeks to answer.

The material discussed in the paper is based on empirical research which took place, at different stages, in Abu Dhabi and Hong Kong across 2010 and 2016, for a total of fourteen months. 24 semi-structured and 18 unstructured interviews were conducted with the principal actors behind the urban development of Masdar City and Hong Kong, including members of the public sector such as policy-makers, developers and spatial planners from local planning councils, as well as representatives from the main architectural studios, investment companies and clean-tech multinationals, involved in the design, finance and technology of the projects, respectively. In addition, key documents, including master plans, development agendas and environmental reports, were examined in order to triangulate the information emerged in the interviews. Given the controversial nature of the information disclosed during the research, interviewees have been anonymised and their identity has been replaced by their role.

The past and present of urban experiments

Conceptually, the paper is framed by the theme of urban experimentation as a lens through which to examine the two most diffused typologies of experimental urban projects, smart city and eco-city initiatives which, as noted in the previous section, tend to differ in theory, but not in practice. More specifically, the paper draws upon a recent strand in urban scholarship, which approaches cities as sites for technical and political experimentation, where alternative models of city-making can, theoretically, be tested and implemented, to produce spaces of sustainability. Recent studies show that, across the world, the built environment is being increasingly used as a laboratory in which policy-makers have the possibility to test, under controlled conditions, new types of governance and urban infrastructure (Evans, 2016; Karvonen and van Heur, 2014). Following the logic of experimentation, a growing number of cities have become the testbed for new urban technologies such as smart grids and automated transport systems, as well as for new urban partnerships bringing together different stakeholders, from city-councils and universities to clean-tech companies and supranational politico-economic unions (Bulkeley and Castán Broto, 2013; Cugurullo, 2016a; Evans and Karvonen, 2014; McLean et al., 2015).

As observed by some scholars, the assumption is that urban experiments take place in a controlled and scientific manner (Evans and Karvonen, 2011). More specifically, the ethos of urban experimentation seems to be based on three key principles: a rigorous process of knowledge production through which a city (or part of it) is examined to elaborate ad hoc solutions to sustainability issues (Karvonen and van Heur, 2014); reflexivity, as a way to critically reflect on both the positive and negative effects of the strategies and technologies adopted, and adjust the plan of action accordingly (McFarlane, 2011); and provision of evidence, by deriving choices from data on the basis of which ‘particular urban infrastructure regimes’ are challenged, and alternative and more sustainable urbanisms are implemented (Bulkeley et al., 2014: 1477). What binds these principles together is the formulation of master plans. At the core of the scientific method is the orderly arrangement of steps (calculations, observations, reflections, etc.) to accomplish an end. In the case of urban experiments, the nature and order of these steps is, in theory, determined by a plan giving comprehensive instruction about what has to be built, how, where and when. This is a key reason why, according to advocates of projects for smart and eco-cities, these initiatives differ from standard and more chaotic processes of city-making and are capable of achieving sustainability. However, the extent to which such urban experiments are actually disciplined by what scholars like Batty (2012), Bettencourt and West (2010) call a science of cities, remains unclear. Indeed, a key question posed by critical geographers and urbanists working in the field of experimental urbanism has been: are alleged experimental urban projects driving real change, leading cities towards a condition of sustainability or are they maintaining business as usual? (Castán Broto and Bulkeley, 2013; Kaika, 2017; Karvonen et al., 2013; McGuirk et al., 2014).

To answer this question, the paper draws upon the insights of urban historians such as Mumford (1961) and Benevolo (1993), stressing the fact that, historically, cities, because of the number and diversity of the actors governing them, have rarely been uniform artefacts built according to a homogeneous vision of urban development. Instead, they have grown following what were in most cases uncoordinated and fragmented processes of urbanisation. As noted by Mumford (1961), urban settlements, ranging from small towns to imperial capitals, have been the product of intersecting visions cultivated and implemented by a plethora of different political actors and, as a result, the built environment has been repeatedly characterised by a multitude of heterogeneous and often incongruous elements. In the Middle Ages, for example, as Benevolo (1993) points out, the city did not have a single centre: it had several centres reflecting different forms of power. ‘The physical form of the city depended upon the political organization’ of the city itself which ‘served as a stage for the meetings and conflicts of many players’ (Benevolo, 1993: 40).

This is a phenomenon which crosses time and space. Far away from the European cities discussed by Benevolo, in 1520, for instance, Cortés (2004), during the conquistadores’ exploration of Mexico, vividly described in a letter to his king, the capital of the Aztec empire, Tenochtitlan, as a patchwork of diverse buildings and neighbourhoods controlled by different political forces. Similar examples can be found in the Renaissance, in the Baroque Era, during the Enlightenment and, with the birth of the industrial city, across the late modern period (Conforti, 2005; Mumford, 1961). Specifically in relation to master plans, the chronic tension between urban politics and urban form discussed above, is one of the main reasons why attempts to implement blueprints for ideal cities, have been repeatedly unsuccessful. Projects for ideal cities such as Sforzinda, for example, conceived by a single mind (Italian architect and philosopher Filarete) and characterised by a rigid geometric design, failed because it is extremely hard, if not impossible, to unify all the different interests of all the different actors involved in the politics of the city, into a single urban design (Fishman, 1982).

Today, the tension between urban politics and urban form is not dissimilar, and a number of studies carried out in the Global North and South, show that the politics of contemporary cities is as diverse as that of medieval, renaissance and baroque cities, and continues to produce physically diverse urban spaces (see, for instance, Davis and Monk, 2008; Strom and Mollenkopf, 2007). Particularly in relation to cases of neoliberal urbanism, geographers and urbanists have been emphasising how, across different spaces, urbanisation is often shaped by politico-economic patterns which, although marked by contextual variegations, tend to erode the power of the state as the sole ruler and builder of the city (Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Peck et al., 2013). The physical results of these trends have been succinctly described in another strand of geographical literature as assemblages. Through the notion of assemblage, cities are not seen as ‘organic wholes’, but rather as spatial formations composed of different elements which are drawn together at particular temporal conjunctions: a phenomenon triggered by the absence of a central and absolute form of power and the presence of multiple sources of power, which co-exist and co-influence urban development (Anderson and McFarlane, 2011: 125).

Although it is possible to find, particularly during the Renaissance and the Baroque era, cases of master-planned settlements based on the vision of a single actor and characterised by physical uniformity, these are extremely rare exceptions coming from spatio-temporal contexts in which kings or lesser rulers were capable of ruling a country or a city-state single-handedly (Calabi, 2001; Kruft, 1989; Rosenau, 1983). Both history and contemporary urban studies show that the uniformity of the built environment has been chronically challenged by the diversity of its politics and this leit motif is what the next section, shifting the focus to the present day, seeks to empirically unpack in relation to an alleged eco-city project and its master plan.

Exposing the eco-city: The case of Masdar City

Masdar City is a project for a new master-planned eco-city, which has been under development in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) since 2007. Once completed, the new city is meant to occupy a surface of 6 km² and accommodate 45,000 to 50,000 people in an urban space which is slowly but steadily emerging in the Emirati desert. Officially promoted as ‘the world’s most sustainable eco-city’, Masdar City is hailed by developers and stakeholders as an alternative model of sustainable urban development, based on a mix of traditional Islamic architecture and clean technologies (Masdar Initiative, 2017b: no page). However, the new Emirati city has been criticised by several urbanists, geographers and political scientists who have lamented the undemocratic spirit of the project and its scarce environmental achievements, particularly in relation to the energy and water supply chain management and ecological impact of the settlement (see, for instance, Crot, 2013; Cugurullo, 2013a, 2013b). By focusing on the political composition of the project, this section shows how different interests of different stakeholders are translated into different elements of the city, and provides an insight into how the absence of a cohesive master plan fragments the materiality of Masdar City, thereby weakening its sustainability potential.

There are a number of actors behind the development of Masdar City and each one of them has its own set of interests and responsibilities. First, there is Abu Dhabi: a sheikhdom ruled by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and characterised by a strong authoritarian regime which dictates every aspect of the life of the emirate, including its urbanisation. Abu Dhabi is the sole funder of Masdar City. It lunched the project in 2007 and, since then, it has been supplying all the capital that is necessary for its implementation: US$20 billion. The reasons for such investment are connected to the agenda of Abu Dhabi which is, in turn, connected to its geography, politics and economy. The main objective of Abu Dhabi is the preservation of its political elite, namely the sheikh and the royal family. To use an Orwellian expression, when it comes to the agenda of Abu Dhabi, ‘the object of power is power’ (Orwell, 2004: 234). As Linz and Stepan (1996) explain, in a sultanistic regime, such as that of Abu Dhabi, the power of the ruler over his subjects is based on a relationship made of fear and, above all, rewards. When rewards are missing, the authority of the ruler begins to crumble.

The events of the Arab Spring have shown that, in the Middle-East and North Africa, the only undemocratic states that have been capable of avoiding irreversible political turmoil are those characterised by strong welfare systems: countries like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Bahrain where local citizens live in a gilded cage made of substantial economic benefits and rewards, and have therefore little or no incentive to subvert the government and change the state of affairs. However, such gilded cages are not easy to sustain as they require a solid economic system which is what Abu Dhabi is missing. What looks like a prosperous state hides, in reality, a very fragile economy grounded in a finite resource: oil. Abu Dhabi’s oil reserves are expected to last for approximately five to eight decades and if the emirate wants to preserve its welfare system and political institutions, it has to develop non-petroleum economic sectors, and this is why, as a local policy-maker explained in an interview, ‘the government is very actively creating new businesses in sectors like clean technology, to diversify the economy away from oil and gas’ (see also Cugurullo, 2016a; Luomi, 2009).

Second, there is the Masdar Initiative, a public company, specialising in clean technology, which is in charge of the Masdar City project. It supervises the development and implementation of the new city, focusing on the managerial and economic aspects of the project. The Masdar Initiative receives Abu Dhabi’s capital and takes every decision with regards to how the budget is spent. It is up to its managers to make decisions over the use of land, the number and type of buildings and infrastructures that will be implemented, what temporal order will be followed in the construction phase, and what supply chains will sustain the built environment. Most importantly, the Masdar Initiative has to make the project profitable or, as an interviewed member of the Marketing and Communications section of Masdar City put it simply, ‘bring cash by making sustainability commercial.’ The interests of the Masdar Initiative are Abu Dhabi’s interests, and its aim is to develop a non-oil sector of the economy via Masdar City.

The Masdar Initiative is responsible for the business that underpins the development of Masdar City. The new city is used as a living laboratory where private companies (including multinationals such as Siemens, Schneider and Mitsubishi) can rent portions of the built environment to research, develop, implement and test under controlled conditions, new clean-tech products. These innovative technologies include smart grids and sensors, concentrated solar power stations and autonomous transport systems, and their development is carried out through what are de facto sub-projects within the Masdar City project. The process functions in synergy with the Masdar Initiative which shares its teams of engineers, researchers and technicians, and takes a percentage of the revenues that are generated once the technology that is developed in Masdar City is commercialised and sold. As a manager from Schneider summarised in an interview, ‘we have a strategic alliance with the Masdar Initiative. We test new technologies, smart grids for example, and we develop them together. Once a new technology is ready, it is implemented and integrated in the city and commercialised straightaway. Once we sell it, Masdar gets a share, a percentage of the revenues that we generate with the product. ¹ ’ Moreover, every Masdarian product is associated with intellectual property rights, such as patents, which investors can buy to produce and commercialise that product, or to extract royalties from the companies that infringe a patent. Ultimately, the combination of the income that the Masdar Initiative generates from sales, rents and patents, is a direct source of profit for Abu Dhabi and represents a new sector of the emirate’s economy (clean technology), which exists because of Masdar City.

This business opens the gates to the city to a plethora of actors. As of this writing, there are several private companies which have signed a partnership with the Masdar Initiative to co-develop clean technologies. These clean-tech companies originate from various parts of the world. They usually have different backgrounds, different missions and different visions, but the objective that is at the core of their agendas is the same: making profit. Clean-tech companies such as Siemens (Germany) and Mitsubishi (Japan), sustain themselves by generating income: a target which is accomplished mostly through the sale of clean technologies for which there is demand. Moreover, especially for multinationals, a core aim is to use the architecture of their buildings to reflect the values and image of the company, such as in the case of Siemens whose offices in and outside Germany are shaped by a similar aesthetic. Given that for the Masdar Initiative it is necessary to have these companies on board (without them the Masdarian clean-tech business would collapse), it has to create a condition in which they can all fulfil their interests. As a representative from Schneider succinctly pointed out, ‘Masdar needs big companies like Schneider in the city’, and this is the reason why it gives them the power to urbanise.

In the Masdar City project, every company that is in partnership with the Masdar Initiative has the opportunity to shape the new city. First, this is done via technological development. As mentioned earlier in this section, Masdar City is a living laboratory where new technology is developed and tested. In order to collect data on their products and see how they function in a real-life environment, companies can integrate them in the built environment, thereby changing the urban fabric of the settlement. The influence on the form of the city varies according to the dimension and quantity of the technology that is installed, which ranges from small smart sensors to large beam-down solar power towers. Second, the partners of the Masdar Initiative have the option to build their headquarters or a branch in Masdar City. They can rent part of the city, choose a specific design and architecture and realise their vision. ‘We have our own architects’ specified, during an interview, a manager from Siemens whose impact on the built environment has been spatially substantial. In 2014, the German company finished the construction of its Middle-East headquarters: a large office building which occupies 20,000 m² of the total area of Masdar City.

The influence of several companies on the form of the city, collides against the agency of what is, nominally, one of the most important actors in the Masdar City project: Foster and Partners (F+P). The London-based international architectural firm is responsible for the master plan of the new settlement and oversees its implementation. The initial master plan was inspired by traditional Islamic architecture and, in particular, by cities such as Aleppo (Syria) and Shibam (Yemen), both originally characterised by a compact urban design meant to maximise passive shading and air circulation. The original vision of F+P was that of a car-free city supplied by renewable energy and served by an automated transport system. A distinct feature of the master plan was the division of the city into an overground and an underground level. A vast undercroft was supposed to work both as a station and a transport network for automated public vehicles, so to increase the amount and size of pedestrian streets and public space on the surface. In addition, the new Emirati city was meant to be divided transversally and horizontally by three narrow parks whose purpose was to channel the winds of the desert and decrease the perceived temperature in the city (for the original rendering, see F+P, 2007). However, the power of F+P in terms of decision-making is limited because, in Masdar City, the economic interests of the Masdar Initiative and its partners are prioritised over the environmental and social goals of Foster’s architects. As a representative from F+P, responsible for the master plan, stated in an interview, ‘the phasing of the project is driven by economics and the needs of the clients dictate where the different buildings will be plugged-in.’

The multiple interferences of the business partners of the Masdar Initiative, nullify the coherence of the master plan and, ultimately, have an impact on the sustainability of the new city. There are three main issues to consider. First, many of the clean-tech projects that take place in Masdar City and shape its built environment are disconnected from the master plan and, above all, from each other. As a result, instead of working together to decrease the environmental impact of the settlement, they operate in an uncoordinated and individualistic manner which often penalises other sustainability initiatives in the city. An example of this fragmented urbanism is the implementation of the Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) project initiated by F+P, and the development of a new model of electric car by one the partners of the Masdar Initiative: Mitsubishi. These two projects, both developed and implemented in Masdar City, are underpinned by two oppositional philosophies and purposes. The aim of the PRT, a system of driverless automated vehicles for up to four passengers, is to eliminate automobile dependency. It was designed to decrease energy waste by connecting every area of the new city via the shortest route, and create a mobile public space for social encounters. By promoting private transport and free roaming in the city, the message of Mitsubishi’s electric cars goes against that of the PRT. Moreover, in order to function, the two projects require two completely different types of infrastructure and urban design. The PRT is engineered to work largely underground. PRT vehicles operate primarily in an undercroft, while electric cars run on the surface of the city. In addition, cars need streets that are broader than those used by pedestrians and are incompatible with the system of narrow alleys envisaged by F+P: a system which, by maximising air circulation and shading, was supposed to encourage people to walk even during the summer months and decrease the dependency on air-conditioning and cars, with considerable advantages in terms of well-being, social interaction and energy reduction. A form of transport based on cars also requires a network of streets that criss-crosses the entire city. This is a type of urban design which clashes with the original linear distribution of green spaces, and ultimately reduces air circulation, thereby increasing the perceived temperature in Masdar City and the use of air-conditioning systems.

Second, because of this individualistic approach to sustainability, the Masdar Initiative and its business partners evaluate the success of their projects individually, instead of considering the overall benefit that they bring to the city. The PRT project, for example, although successful from an environmental and social perspective, was abandoned by the Masdar Initiative inasmuch as, for the Emirati company, it was considered to be too expensive to implement in relation to its potential investment return. As a manager from the Masdar Initiative put it in an interview, ‘the PRT costs a fortune and Masdar City is not an environmental crusade.’ The implementation of the PRT stopped in 2009 when the Masdar Initiative signed a contract with Mitsubishi to research and develop electric cars: a product for which the market analysts of Masdar City believed there was more demand. Today, PRT vehicles serve approximately 10% of the city. What had already been built has been kept alive by the Masdar Initiative, and continues to function while the city grows following an oppositional urbanistic rationale which is gradually making the PRT useless.

Third, thinking of sustainability individualistically means that the interests of single companies are prioritised over the overall interests of the city, and the fact that the main interests of private companies are economic in nature, means that in Masdar City economic objectives are prioritised over environmental and social concerns. Key issues of social justice are not taken into account and there is scarce consideration for the distribution of the environmental benefits provided by the new city. The majority of housing space (80%), for example, is reserved for high-income workers, and while social housing does feature in the planning agenda, it covers only a minor portion of the settlement and is supposed to be implemented at a later (and undefined) stage. In addition, ecological questions that cannot be easily translated into profit are discarded. Little effort, for instance, is made to organise the supply chains behind the development of the new city (whose provision of water and energy is sustained mostly by petroleum) as to be less harmful to the local environment and the global climate, and limited attention is paid to the impact that urbanisation has on regional ecosystems and ecosystem services. Instead, the focus of the Masdar Initiative and its partners is on CO₂, inasmuch as most of the technology that is developed and sold via Masdar City is designed to reduce the carbon emissions of cities: a choice based on the fact that, because of the current climate crisis and climate change discourses, such technology is now in demand (see also Swyngedouw, 2010).

As this section has shown, the construction of Masdar City has not been disciplined by a coherent and precise master plan. What has been promoted as a homogenous, master-planned city is, in reality, a patchwork made of incongruous parts developed by different actors with different interests. This type of urbanism, as the specific example of the PRT has illustrated, creates a tension among the components of Masdar City, thereby limiting its sustainability potential. Keeping the same analytical focus, the paper now turns to the case of Hong Kong to empirically explore another mainstream type of experimental urbanism: the smart city.

Exposing the smart city: The case of Hong Kong

Hong Kong is an urban region of 2755 km², with an estimated population of 7346 people (Census and Statistics Department, 2017). Born as a city-state in 1841 with the British occupation of Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong is less than 200 years old: a factor which makes this Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (SAR) much older than Masdar City, but centuries younger than other global cities such as London and New York (Shelton et al., 2013). Nonetheless, what at the dawn of British colonial rule, was described as a ‘barren rock’, is now one of the most powerful financial and trade centres in the world and a fast-growing settlement with more skyscrapers than New York (Shelton et al., 2013: 2; Shen, 2008; The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2017). However, while, chronologically and quantitatively, the urban and economic growth of Hong Kong might seem impressive and unique, from a sustainability point of view, the story of the city reflects some of the most common socio-environmental problems that large urban settlements from around the world undergo today.

Hong Kong is experiencing high levels of air pollution, due to large amounts of CO₂ emitted into a maze-like built environment which hinders air circulation and traps pollutants (Higgins, 2013; World Bank, 2017). Hong Kong’s water, sea water in particular, is also extremely polluted, as the city has one of the busiest container ports in the world, which represents a constant source of traffic, waste and, ultimately, a major threat to the marine biodiversity of the region and human health (Wong and Wan, 2009; WWF, 2015). Characterised by a rising GINI coefficient, Hong Kong is a divided city where the distribution of environmental burdens and benefits across sectors of society is unequal, and a large number of low-income households are located in the most degraded housing environments (Hong Kong Government, 2012; LSE Cities, 2011; The Guardian, 2013, 2017). As noted by several scholars, ‘the construction industry in Hong Kong has long been associated with poor quality’ (Tam et al., 2000: 437). A number of studies denounce the presence across the city-region of hundreds of run-down residential buildings which damage both the natural environment and the occupiers (see Chiang and Tang, 2003). Doing business in a geographical area characterised by a chronic lack of flat, developable land, Hong Kong’s developers tend to maximise the usable space by building high-rise housing units, while reducing construction costs through the implementation of low-quality infrastructure: a situation which has produced a hyper-dense built environment where only high-income workers can afford safe and healthy homes (Chan et al., 2002).

It is in this context that, over the last decade, the local government has promoted a series of initiatives meant to steer the urbanisation of Hong Kong towards a condition of urban sustainability (Cugurullo, 2017). First in 2007 with the publication of Hong Kong 2030, a large-scale urban agenda built around grandiose environmental, social and economic objectives but, as noted by scholars such as Francesch-Huidobro (2012) and Higgins (2013), largely ineffective due to its non-compulsory nature, and, more recently, with an ambitious smart-city programme. Launched by the government in September 2013 under the name of Smarter Hong Kong, Smarter Living, Hong Kong’s project for a smart city, is presented as an innovative and cohesive plan of action or, in the words of the Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development, a ‘blueprint’ meant to simultaneously re-shape the urban and the economic fabric of Hong Kong, by developing new information and communication technologies and integrating them in the city (Commerce and Economic Development Bureau, 2013: 1). From the same analytical angle used for Masdar City, this section now looks at the politics underpinning Hong Kong’s smart-city agenda, and shows how its implementation has been fragmented by the influence of a number of different stakeholders which have produced a built environment far less homogeneous and innovative than what the local government claims.

The development of the smart-city agenda of Hong Kong is intrinsically connected to the political economy of the region. The economic life of Hong Kong is based upon the principle of One Country, Two Systems meaning that, although the city-region is, politically, part of China, from an economic perspective Hong Kong is not subjected to mainland China’ socialism, and operates under its pre-unification economic system: capitalism. Today, Hong Kong is shaped by a neoliberal model of economic and urban development. According to the Index of Economic Freedom (2017), Hong Kong has the world’s freest economy: a condition which economists have often described as laissez-faire capitalism (see Cheung, 2000). The intervention of the state in the economic activities that take place across the city-region is minimum, and great freedom is given to the many forces that form Hong Kong’s private sector, particularly in finance and real-estate which constitute the core of the economy (Haila, 2000; Lai, 2012). Similarly, when it comes to urbanisation, the role of the government over the shape and function of the built environment is marginal. As noted by Raco and Street (2012), the urban development of Hong Kong is not framed or guided by a governmental vision of the city. Instead, land (which is publicly owned) is allocated to developers through a bidding process and, once a lease is signed, the authority of the government over what will be built in a parcel is little or none.

With thousands of private companies competing for the control of parcels of land, and hundreds of them gaining the right to shape a portion of the city, the urban politics of Hong Kong is extremely diverse, and so is the built environment. The laissez-faire attitude of the government towards urbanisation, in combination with the absence of an overarching plan of urban development, has produced a city composed of heterogeneous and disconnected urban spaces. Developers have the first and last word on the form of the parts of the city that they control, and act independently with little or no knowledge of how the other parts are structured and operate. In such a fragmented urban-political context, a smart-city agenda, intended as a cohesive plan of urban renewal and expansion, cannot be realised. As a representative from the local planning department confirmed during an interview, ‘we don’t have an integrated policy.’ In the words of the representative, Hong Kong’s approach toward smart urbanism is ‘project-based’ and focused on the single rather than on the whole. This is an approach which does not produce a smart city functioning organically to improve urban living across the whole settlement. Instead, it generates a number of smart buildings, infrastructures and technologies which are not integrated in a broader system, and function independently as separate entities.

Among the many examples of smart-city projects taking place in Hong Kong, the case of IBM is emblematic. IBM, a multinational corporation specialising in computer science and information technology, is one of the global leaders in smart devices ranging from data-analysis software to power grids. It has a large branch in Hong Kong, called IBM Hong Kong (IBM HK), which has been providing services across the city-region for over fifty years. At the time of writing, IBM HK is involved in several local projects, mostly with the private sector, which are part of Smarter Planet: the firm’s manifesto of smart urbanism broadly advertised as a perpetual condition of real-time knowledge production via digital devices, which informs and improves urban living (IBM HK, 2017). Among the companies that have recently used IBM HK’s services, there are big multinationals such as Cathay Pacific, owning entire buildings in different areas of the city, as well as smaller Chinese companies which occupy only a portion of what is usually a large office complex.

The practice of IBM HK’s smart urbanism is indicative of three key issues. First, the companies that consume IBM HK’s services do not act in concert: each one of them operates on an individual basis for its own benefit. This means that the advantages produced by smart technologies are confined within the private spaces of single companies, and are not equally distributed across Hong Kong. IBM HK’s energy solutions, for instance, mainly consisting of smart sensors and dynamic energy networks designed to optimise the use of energy and reduce waste, are not operative in the whole city. Instead, they are implemented and function only in the buildings where that specific service has been paid for, and their economic, social and environmental benefits (such as savings, safety and clean and healthy environments) are available only to IBM’s customers. The lack of cohesion is starker when multinationals come into play. A company like Cathay Pacific, for example, employs IBM software and hardware to maximise the production, circulation and storage of the data that its business generates. The data is then analysed by an IBM programme, and Cathay Pacific uses the information collected to make data-based decisions over its commercial operations. Ultimately, the technologies of IBM HK infuse intelligence into Cathay Pacific’s economic activities and increment the profit of the company, but while Cathay Pacific is located in Hong Kong, its profit is not exactly Hong Kong’s profit. Because of its multinational nature, Cathay Pacific is composed of stakeholders which do not even live in Hong Kong. Moreover, under the local low-tax regime, it is only a minimal part of the company’s income that feeds into the local economy.

Second, it is important to note that, in addition to being unevenly distributed, these smart interventions, affect and improve exclusively office spaces, not residential buildings, thereby providing no alternative urbanism to the one that has been causing the housing disease discussed earlier in this section. No innovative strategy is developed to improve the quality of the buildings in which people live, and the housing landscape of the region continues to be fractured, with a minority of high-priced properties of a high standard and a majority of low-quality residential estates. This disregard for social issues derives from the government’s prioritisation of economic targets and, more directly, from a conscious choice of the Planning Department which leaves urbanisation in the hands of private developers, to maximise the business potential of the land. ‘We are not taking the lead’ admitted in an interview a member of the Planning Department in charge of Hong Kong’s smart-city agenda, explaining the economic rationale behind the position of the Department: ‘We are trying to change the environment to make it more conducive to business. We need to make the environment attractive to companies and the smart-city concept seems to be the way forward.’

Third, at the regional scale, such planning void, does not fragment only the built environment: smart buildings, infrastructures and technologies are developed in isolation from each other and from the natural environment. From an ecological point of view, this implies a disregard for ecosystems and ecosystem services, inasmuch as state-of-the-art intelligent buildings, while capable of processing complex problems regarding, for instance, their energy performance, have no understanding of the bioregion that is around them. Emblematic of this unecological urbanism is the exclusion from the smart-city agenda of Hong Kong’s only administrative division with an expertise in environmental preservation and ecology: the Environment Bureau. As the manager of a company working on the development of a large complex of new high-tech buildings stated in an interview, ‘the Environment Bureau is not involved’ and constructions have been carried out without any knowledge of the ecology of the region. The manager admitted that no environmental impact assessment was conducted during the construction phase which followed what was described as ‘the standard approach in Hong Kong’: the plot was cleared of the existing vegetation, the land was levelled and eventually paved. This type of urbanism reflects a broader regional trend in urban development which, as showed in a number of studies (Long et al., 2014; Qiu et al., 2015; Wan et al., 2015), has been causing major damages to the ecosystems of China. Cases of soil erosion, loss of forest cover and wetland decline, due to rapid waves of urbanisation driven by the logic of economic growth and ecologically uninformed, have been widely documented in China since the early 1990s (He et al., 2014; Peng et al., 2015). In this sense, what the government of Hong Kong promotes as an alternative and more sustainable way of approaching city-making, the smart city, only replicates the same patterns that have threatened the natural habitat for almost three decades.

Conclusion: Frankenstein urbanism

His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips. (Shelley, 2013: 45)

In a similar vein, when observed through the lens of urban experimentation, the Masdar City project and Hong Kong’s smart-city agenda can be seen as experiments which fit together different spaces, infrastructures and technologies, to create a single urban settlement. However, while all the pieces, individually, function well, their juxtaposition creates a tension which destabilises the experiment. In the case of Masdar City, for example, the PRT and the electric car perform up to expectations, but the diffusion of the latter hinders the development of the former, and interferes with the original car-free design meant to create low-carbon, green social spaces. In the case of Hong Kong, smart data-networks circulate information in real time, and sensors and meters monitor the production and consumption of energy, but these services take place in isolated high-tech buildings which being disconnected from the surrounding built and natural environment, tend to foster social inequality and biodiversity loss.

The paper defines this approach to urban experimentation as Frankenstein urbanism. As a critical theory meant to understand, critique and improve urban experiments such as smart and eco-city projects, particularly from a sustainability point of view, the concept of Frankenstein urbanism can be unpacked into three key statements:

Urban experiments take place at different scales and are characterised by different degrees of experimentation.

From these core statements, the theory of Frankenstein urbanism develops a twofold critique. First, in capitalist politico-economic contexts, when two different elements of an urban experiment contrast each other, the most remunerative one prevails. In the case of Masdar City, for example, the PRT was successful in environmental and social terms, but eventually its development was suppressed because, economically, it was not as profitable as that of electric cars. Given that, in principle, there cannot be sustainability without balancing economic, social and environmental interests, this is an aspect of urban experimentation which prevents the formation of sustainable cities. Second, in smart and eco-city projects the focus is on the single rather than on the whole. From an ecological and social perspective, this means that buildings, infrastructures and technologies are not designed and implemented to be connected to the broader bioregion, and to benefit the entire city. Hong Kong’s new smart buildings, for instance, ignore local ecosystems and are built over them, outside the most deprived areas of the city, to the advantage of a small percentage of the population.

In conclusion, what emerges from this study, is that the two most diffused types of urban experimentation, the smart city and the eco-city, are not promoting alternative and sustainable strategies of urban development. Instead of advancing a holistic and rigorous method of city-making, as claimed by their advocates, they are reproposing traditional, chaotic urban models which have been around for millennia. In this sense, there is not much difference between the case studies discussed in this paper, and the type of urbanism that scholars like Mumford and Benevolo found in Medieval cities. Alleged smart and eco-cities are, like a myriad of cities before them, politically fragmented urban settlements characterised by fragmented built environments. What differs is that, from a sustainability point of view, this is an urbanism which was relatively less problematic in the Middle Ages when the environmental, social and economic impact of cities was lower, but now, given the current magnitude of urbanisation, it cannot be sustained. In the 21st-century, a cohesive and synergistic planning scheme, combining different yet complemental disciplines, such as geography, ecology, sociology, engineering, computer science and architecture, is the only weapon that can prevail against the monsters generated by the practice of Frankenstein urbanism. In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein’s creature kills its creator and dies alone, but today, with the majority of cities far from reaching their final form, a positive finale is still possible.