While the idea of the ‘Smart City’ has attracted increasing attention from academia, industry, and
government this interest has largely had a technical and technological focus. This paper identifies
some of the important political and policy challenges facing the idea, the discourse, of a ‘smart city’ as a means to optimise HCI input into the ‘smart city’ debate. It then addresses that gap by detailing a research project that explored how experts in smart city research and development in the UK context responded to this policy challenge. Experts were asked questions regarding their prior experience with the “smart city”, their understandings of what it means for a city to be smart, and what policy potentials they've recognised in the smart city. The paper analyses and offers a
synthesis of the responses collected throughout the research with the current policies concerning
various smart city proximity, thereby providing a critical assessment of the values underlying the
smart city. The paper aims to explore and present some of the policy possibilities for UK smart cities that are potentially useful for politicians, policy makers, planners, academics, and technology
companies. I believe that these perspectives for policy development can be used to inform
responsible development, spatially and socially inclusive technologies, and ultimately more resilient and liveable cities.