Idea · Critique

The smart-city critique

2015 · Global · Adam Greenfield, Rob Kitchin et al.
Songdo International Business District in South Korea, the vendor-led sensor-laden new town that became the standing target of smart-city criticism
Songdo International Business District in South Korea, the vendor-led sensor-laden new town that became the standing target of smart-city criticism · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons user Piotrus

What it is

As corporate 'smart city' visions of sensor-laden, data-driven urbanism spread from around 2015, scholars, journalists and activists attacked them as technocratic, vendor-led and surveillant, prioritising hardware and dashboards over politics, equity and citizen voice. Critics argued that such schemes treated complex urban problems as engineering challenges to be optimised, while concentrating control and data in private firms. The collapse of Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs Quayside project in Toronto in 2020, amid disputes over data governance and public oversight, became a touchstone case. The critique pushed cities to demand stronger rules on data and procurement.

Why it matters

It reframed urban technology as a question of governance, data rights and power rather than mere efficiency. By doing so it tempered uncritical smart-city adoption and put data governance and democratic accountability onto the urban-tech agenda.

Plans it shaped

See it on the timeline →
hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.