Rethinking Smart Urbanism is an empirical exploration of the multiple ways in which cities and infrastructures are constructed and reconstructed through ICT innovation and appropriation. Drawing on the case of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, the study explains existing infrastructure constellations through countervailing processes and rationalities in the context of splintered urbanism. In doing so, the study examines the relationship between urban plans and digital infrastructure development, place-based contexts that shape digital infrastructures, and the extent to which these infrastructures facilitate utility companies’ ambitions of extending centralized networks to new territories. It draws on the theoretical and empirical base of urban and infrastructure studies, particularly in the fields of smart urbanism, postcolonial urbanism, and Science and Technology Studies. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative research design and presents in-depth case studies that combine ethnographic methods with a thorough investigation of written sources. Ultimately, it is hoped to enhance our understanding of urban and digital possibilities, and add new insights to debates on technology and urbanity in Africa and beyond.

Smart Urbanism (SU) – the rebuilding of cities through the integration of digital technologies with buildings, neighbourhoods, networked infrastructures and people – is being represented as a unique emerging ‘solution’ to the majority of problems faced by cities today. SU discourses, enacted by technology companies, national governments and supranational agencies alike, claim a supremacy of urban digital technologies for managing and controlling infrastructures, achieving greater effectiveness in managing service demand and reducing carbon emissions, developing greater social interaction and community networks, providing new services around health and social care etc. Smart urbanism is being represented as the response to almost every facet of the contemporary urban question. This book explores this common conception of the problematic of smart urbanism and critically address what new capabilities are being created by whom and with what exclusions; how these are being developed - and contested; where is this happening both within and between cities; and, with what sorts of social and material consequences. The aim of the book is to identify and convene a currently fragmented and disconnected group of researchers, commentators, developers and users from both within and outside the mainstream SU discourse, including several of those that adopt a more critical perspective, to assess ‘what’ problems of the city smartness can address The volume provides the first internationally comparative assessment of SU in cities of the global north and south, critically evaluates whether current visions of SU are able to achieve their potential; and then identifies alternative trajectories for SU that hold radical promise for reshaping cities.

Within the most recent discussion on smart cities and the way this vision is affecting urban changes and dynamics, this book explores the interplay between planning and design both at the level of the design and planning domains’ theories and practices. Urban transformation is widely recognized as a complex phenomenon, rich in uncertainty. It is the unpredictable consequence of complex interplay between urban forces (both top-down or bottom-up), urban resources (spatial, social, economic and infrastructural as well as political or cognitive) and transformation opportunities (endogenous or exogenous). The recent attention to Urban Living Lab and Smart City initiatives is disclosinga promising bridge between the micro-scale environments, with the dynamics of such forces and resources, and the urban governance mechanisms. This bridge is represented by those urban collaborative environments, where processes of smart service co-design take place through dialogic interaction with and among citizens within a situated and cultural-specific frame.

Shaping Smart for Better Cities powerfully demonstrates the range of theoretical and practical challenges, opportunities and success factors involved in successfully deploying digital technologies in cities, focusing on the importance of recognizing local context and multi-layered urban relationships in designing successful urban interventions. The first section, 'Rethinking Smart (in) Places' interrogates the smart city from a theoretical vantage point. The second part, 'Shaping Smart Places' examines various case studies critically. Hence the volume offers an intellectual resource that expands on the current literature, but also provides a pedagogical resource to universities as well as a reflective opportunity for practitioners. The cases allow for an examination of the practical implications of smart interventions in space, whilst the theoretical reflections enable expansion of the literature. Students are encouraged to learn from case studies and apply that learning in design. Academics will gain from the learning embedded in the documentation of the case studies in different geographic contexts, while practitioners can apply their learning to the conceptualisation of new forms of technology use. - Demonstrates how to adapt smart urban interventions for hyper-local context in geographic parameters, spatial relationships, and socio-political characteristics - Provides a problem-solving approach based on specific smart place examples, applicable to real-life urban management - Offers insights from numerous case studies of smart cities interventions in real civic spaces

This book is intended to help explore the field of smart sustainable cities in its complexity, heterogeneity, and breadth, the many faces of a topical subject of major importance for the future that encompasses so much of modern urban life in an increasingly computerized and urbanized world. Indeed, sustainable urban development is currently at the center of debate in light of several ICT visions becoming achievable and deployable computing paradigms, and shaping the way cities will evolve in the future and thus tackle complex challenges. This book integrates computer science, data science, complexity science, sustainability science, system thinking, and urban planning and design. As such, it contains innovative computer–based and data–analytic research on smart sustainable cities as complex and dynamic systems. It provides applied theoretical contributions fostering a better understanding of such systems and the synergistic relationships between the underlying physical and informational landscapes. It offers contributions pertaining to the ongoing development of computer–based and data science technologies for the processing, analysis, management, modeling, and simulation of big and context data and the associated applicability to urban systems that will advance different aspects of sustainability. This book seeks to explicitly bring together the smart city and sustainable city endeavors, and to focus on big data analytics and context-aware computing specifically. In doing so, it amalgamates the design concepts and planning principles of sustainable urban forms with the novel applications of ICT of ubiquitous computing to primarily advance sustainability. Its strength lies in combining big data and context–aware technologies and their novel applications for the sheer purpose of harnessing and leveraging the disruptive and synergetic effects of ICT on forms of city planning that are required for future forms of sustainable development. This is because the effects of such technologies reinforce one another as to their efforts for transforming urban life in a sustainable way by integrating data–centric and context–aware solutions for enhancing urban systems and facilitating coordination among urban domains. This timely and comprehensive book is aimed at a wide audience across science, academia industry, and policymaking. It provides the necessary material to inform relevant research communities of the state–of–the–art research and the latest development in the area of smart sustainable urban development, as well as a valuable reference for planners, designers, strategists, and ICT experts who are working towards the development and implementation of smart sustainable cities based on big data analytics and context–aware computing.

Globally, Smart Cities initiatives are pursued which reproduce the interests of capital and neoliberal government, rather than wider public good. This book explores smart urbanism and 'the right to the city', examining citizenship, social justice, commoning, civic participation, and co-creation to imagine a different kind of Smart City.

While technology is developing at a fast pace, urban planners and cities are still behind in finding effective ways to use technology to address citizen’s needs. Multiple aspects of sustainable urbanism are brought together in this book, along with advanced technologies and their connections to urban planning and management. It integrates urban studies, smart cities, AI, IoT, remote sensing, and GIS. Highlights include land use planning, spatial planning, and ecosystem-based information to improve economic opportunities. Urban planners and engineers will understand the use of AI in disaster management and the use of GIS in finding suitable landfill sites for sustainable waste management. Features Explains the process of urban heritage conservation, including the process of urban renewal and its regeneration and the role of citizens in urban renewal, planning, and management. Includes several case studies highlighting urban environmental problems and challenges in developed and developing countries and the ways for converting urban areas into smart cities. Focuses on urban resources, the supply of energy in smart cities, and their proper management practices. Introduces the role of remote sensing, GIS, and IoT in making a smart city and meeting sustainable goals. Analyzes unique case studies, their challenges and obstacles, and proposes a set of factors to understanding smart city initiatives and projects.

This book comprises a selection of the top contributions presented at the second international conference “Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions 2017”, held in March 2017 in Bolzano, Italy. Featuring forty-six papers by policy-makers, academics and consultants, it discusses current groundbreaking research in smart and sustainable planning, including the progress made in overcoming cities’ challenges towards improving the quality of life. Climate change adaptation and mitigation of global warming, generally identified as drivers of global policies, are just the “tip of the iceberg” when it comes to smart energy transition. Indeed, equally relevant towards this current transformation – and key topics in this volume – are ICTs, public spaces and society; next economy for the city; strategies and actions for good governance; urban-rural innovation; rethinking mobility. The book’s depth in understanding and insightfulness in re-thinking demonstrate the breaking of new ground in smart and sustainable planning. A new ground that policy-makers, academics and consultants may build upon as a bedrock for smart and sustainable planning.

Sustainable urbanization has moved to the forefront of political debate and policy agendas for numerous reasons. Among the most important are a growing appreciation both of the implications of rapid urbanization now occurring in China, India, and many other low and middle income countries with historically low urbanization levels and of the related challenges posed to urban areas worldwide by climate and environmental change. Conceptualizing urban sustainability for this new era, this compact book makes a clear contribution to the sustainable urbanization agenda through authoritative interventions that contextualize, assess, and explain the importance of three central characteristics of sustainable towns and cities everywhere: that they should be fair, green, and accessible.

The Smart City paradigm aims at resource efficient urban development by means of ICT implementation. Cities where we work and conduct our research are building Smart City strategies and that research institutions increasingly fund research into the development of smart infrastructure and. Smart Cities are considered a radical paradigm shift and motors of technological innovation: economic growth, higher quality of life, efficiency and risk control in the face of shrinking resources and impending climate change. This smartification is contrasted by increasing calls by civil society and urban social movements for more encompassing inclusion in decision-making. New urban actors are acquiring agency through situated knowledge, local expertise, social networking, and cooperation and collaboration skills. Behind these movements a seemingly parallel discourse to the “Smart City” paradigm is gaining ground – the discourse of the commons. Commons are defined as the combination of resources, people and practices: resources which are defined and managed by a group of people – of commoners – and a practice of commoning that looks after, takes care for and fosters this resource without exhausting it. Commoning is a practice that seems closer than any other practice to a sustainable way of life. Are these two discourses – the discourse on the Smart City and the discourse on the urban commons – irreconcilable antagonists or do they share a common ground which needs to be uncovered, developed and advocated. This question is by no means merely theoretical. It is also a very practical question which pertains to the management and distribution of the resources we depend on. It is a very political question as it demands negotiation and the taking of sides. And it is an ethical question in that it relates to how we respect and stand up for each other – our fellow human beings and also the non-human nature for which we are responsible. The essays and transcripts of the symposium “Beware of Smart People!” want to make a first contribution and stimulate future research in the field. Das Paradigma der Smart City ist Ausdruck der Ambition, Stadtentwicklung durch die Anwendung von IKT effizient und Ressourcen schonend zu gestalten. Städte in denen wir arbeiten und über die wir forschen entwickeln Smart City Strategien und Forschungsförderung spezialisiert sich zunehmend auf die Entwicklung „smarter“ Infrastrukturen und Steuerungsmechanismen. Smart Cities werden als radikaler Paradigmenwechsel gelesen und als Motoren technologischer Entwicklung: ökonomisches Wachstum, höhere Lebensqualität, Effizienz und Risikokontrolle angesichts abnehmender Ressourcen und drohenden Klimawandels. Dieser „Smartifizierung“ stehen die zunehmenden Forderungen zivilgesellschaftlicher Gruppen und sozialer Bewegungen für mehr und umfassendere Einbindung in Entscheidungsprozesse entgegen. Neue urbane Akteure werden zu Agenten, indem sie ihre Erfahrungswissen, ihre lokalen Kenntnisse, ihre sozialen Netzwerke und Fähigkeiten zur Kooperation und Kollaboration einbringen. Hintergrund diese Bewegungen ist ein augenscheinlich paralleler Diskurs zur „Smart City“ welcher sich zunehmend Gehör verschafft – der Diskurs über die Gemeingüter, die Commons. Commons werden definiert als das Zusammenspiel von Ressourcen, Menschen und Praktiken: Ressourcen, die von einer Gemeinschaft – den Commonern - definiert und verwaltet werden, und eine Praxis des Commoning, welche die Ressource schonend bewirtschaftet ohne sie zu verbrauchen. In diesem Sinne scheint Commoning eine Praxis, die einer nachhaltigen Lebensweise am nächsten kommt. Sind diese zwei Diskurse – der Diskurs über die Smart City und jener über die urbanen Gemeingüter – unvereinbare Antagonisten oder teilen sie Gemeinsamkeiten, welche offen gelegt, weiter entwickelt und verfechtet werden sollten? Diese Frage ist keineswegs eine rein theoretische. Sie ist eine sehr praktische Frage, da sie auf das die Verteilung und das Management lebenswichtiger Ressourcen zielt. Sie ist eine politische Frage, da sie Auseinandersetzung und Parteinahme einfordert. Und sie ist eine ethische Frage, denn sie fordert gegenseitigen Respekt und Einsatz ein – für unsere Mitmenschen sowie für die nichtmenschliche Natur für die wir Verantwortung tragen. Die Texte und Aufzeichnungen des Symposiums „Beware of Smart People!“ wollen hierzu einen Beitrag leisten und zukünftige Forschungsvorhaben stimulieren.