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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Foucault and the smart city
AU - Wang, Ding
PY - 2017/9/6
Y1 - 2017/9/6
N2 - This paper critically analyses the concept of the ‘smart city’, focusing on uncovering the formation of a Foucauldian smart city ‘discourse’. Smart city developments and policies might be seen to support new ways of imagining, organising and managing the city and its flows. Alternatively, it might be argued that they seek to impress a new moral order on cities by introducing specific technical parameters to distinguish between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ city. The ‘smart city' discourse reflects knowledge/power and may be characterised as a powerful tool for the production of techno-centric rhetoric and narrative where urban and societal problems are rendered docile and amenable subjects to technology solutions. The paper is based on a series of ethnographic interviews with smart city experts and uses a Foucauldian analytical approach to offer a powerful and critical alternative perspective to enrich smart cities future thinking.
AB - This paper critically analyses the concept of the ‘smart city’, focusing on uncovering the formation of a Foucauldian smart city ‘discourse’. Smart city developments and policies might be seen to support new ways of imagining, organising and managing the city and its flows. Alternatively, it might be argued that they seek to impress a new moral order on cities by introducing specific technical parameters to distinguish between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ city. The ‘smart city' discourse reflects knowledge/power and may be characterised as a powerful tool for the production of techno-centric rhetoric and narrative where urban and societal problems are rendered docile and amenable subjects to technology solutions. The paper is based on a series of ethnographic interviews with smart city experts and uses a Foucauldian analytical approach to offer a powerful and critical alternative perspective to enrich smart cities future thinking.
KW - Foucault
KW - Smart City
KW - Discursive Formation
KW - Critical Thinking
U2 - 10.1080/14606925.2017.1352934
DO - 10.1080/14606925.2017.1352934
M3 - Journal article
VL - 20
SP - S4378-S4386
JO - The Design Journal
JF - The Design Journal
SN - 1460-6925
IS - Suppl. 1
ER -