IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v55y2018i4p679-701.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The ideological alignment of smart urbanism in Singapore: Critical reflections on a political paradox

Author

Listed:
  • Lily Kong

    (Singapore Management University, Singapore)

  • Orlando Woods

    (Singapore Management University, Singapore)

Abstract

Over the past decade, much has been written about the potential of smart urbanism to bring about various and lasting forms of betterment. The embedding of digital technologies within urban infrastructures has been well documented, and the efficiencies of smart models of urban governance and management have been lauded. More recently, however, the discourse has been labelled ‘hegemonic’, and accused of developing a view of smart technology that is blinkered by its failure to critique its socio-political effects. By focusing on the case of Singapore’s ‘Smart Nation’ initiative, this paper embraces the paradoxes at the heart of smart urbanism and, in doing so, interrogates the tension between ideology and praxis, efficiency and control, access and choice, and smart governance and smart citizenship. It also demonstrates how such tensions are (re)produced through ‘fourthspace’ – the digitally enabled spaces of urbanism that are co-created, and that contribute to an expansion and diffusion of social and political responsibility. It ends by suggesting how such spaces have the potential to radically transform not just the urban environment, but also the role of government and citizens in designing urban futures.

Suggested Citation

  • Lily Kong & Orlando Woods, 2018. "The ideological alignment of smart urbanism in Singapore: Critical reflections on a political paradox," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(4), pages 679-701, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:55:y:2018:i:4:p:679-701
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098017746528
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098017746528
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0042098017746528?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ignacio Farías & Anders Blok, 2016. "Technical democracy as a challenge to urban studies," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(4), pages 539-548, July.
    2. Rob Kitchin, 2015. "Making sense of smart cities: addressing present shortcomings," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 8(1), pages 131-136.
    3. Robert G. Hollands, 2008. "Will the real smart city please stand up?," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(3), pages 303-320, December.
    4. Martin Dodge & Rob Kitchin, 2005. "Code and the Transduction of Space," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 95(1), pages 162-180, March.
    5. Gillian Rose, 2017. "Posthuman Agency in the Digitally Mediated City: Exteriorization, Individuation, Reinvention," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 107(4), pages 779-793, July.
    6. Tooran Alizadeh & Neil Sipe & Jago Dodson, 2014. "Spatial Planning and High-Speed Broadband: Australia's National Broadband Network and Metropolitan Planning," International Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(3-4), pages 359-378, November.
    7. Emmanuelle Vaast & Geoff Walsham, 2009. "Trans-Situated Learning: Supporting a Network of Practice with an Information Infrastructure," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 20(4), pages 547-564, December.
    8. Ezra Ho, 2017. "Smart subjects for a Smart Nation? Governing (smart)mentalities in Singapore," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(13), pages 3101-3118, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Trencher, Gregory, 2019. "Towards the smart city 2.0: Empirical evidence of using smartness as a tool for tackling social challenges," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 117-128.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kitchin, Rob, 2018. "Towards a genuinely humanizing smart urbanism," SocArXiv 5jkx4, Center for Open Science.
    2. Ryan Burns & Max Andrucki, 2021. "Smart cities: Who cares?," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(1), pages 12-30, February.
    3. Malene Freudendal-Pedersen & Sven Kesselring & Eriketti Servou, 2019. "What is Smart for the Future City? Mobilities and Automation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-21, January.
    4. Trencher, Gregory, 2019. "Towards the smart city 2.0: Empirical evidence of using smartness as a tool for tackling social challenges," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 117-128.
    5. Lim Seng BOON & Jalaluddin Abdul MALEK & Mohd Yusof HUSSAIN & Zurinah TAHIR, 2020. "Understanding the trends and characteristics of smart urbanism across continents," Smart Cities and Regional Development (SCRD) Journal, Smart-EDU Hub, Faculty of Public Administration, National University of Political Studies & Public Administration, vol. 4(1), pages 23-35, March.
    6. Kummitha, Rama Krishna Reddy, 2019. "Smart cities and entrepreneurship: An agenda for future research," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    7. Kitchin, Rob & Cardullo, Paolo & Di Feliciantonio, Cesare, 2018. "Citizenship, Justice and the Right to the Smart City," SocArXiv b8aq5, Center for Open Science.
    8. Paolo Cardullo & Rob Kitchin, 2019. "Smart urbanism and smart citizenship: The neoliberal logic of ‘citizen-focused’ smart cities in Europe," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 37(5), pages 813-830, August.
    9. Ryan Burns & Victoria Fast & Anthony Levenda & Byron Miller, 2021. "Smart cities: Between worlding and provincialising," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(3), pages 461-470, February.
    10. Ferreira, António & Oliveira, Fernanda Paula & von Schönfeld, Kim Carlotta, 2022. "Planning cities beyond digital colonization? Insights from the periphery," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    11. Stephen Leitheiser & Alexander Follmann, 2020. "The social innovation–(re)politicisation nexus: Unlocking the political in actually existing smart city campaigns? The case of SmartCity Cologne, Germany," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(4), pages 894-915, March.
    12. Adrian Buttazzoni & Marta Veenhof & Leia Minaker, 2020. "Smart City and High-Tech Urban Interventions Targeting Human Health: An Equity-Focused Systematic Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(7), pages 1-23, March.
    13. Perng, Sung-Yueh & Kitchin, Rob & Donncha, Darach Mac, 2017. "Hackathons, entrepreneurship and the passionate making of smart cities," OSF Preprints nu3ec, Center for Open Science.
    14. Secinaro, Silvana & Brescia, Valerio & Lanzalonga, Federico & Santoro, Gabriele, 2022. "Smart city reporting: A bibliometric and structured literature review analysis to identify technological opportunities and challenges for sustainable development," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 296-313.
    15. Insaf Khelladi & Sylvaine Castellano & David Kalisz, 2020. "The smartization of metropolitan cities: the case of Paris," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 1301-1325, December.
    16. Bernd W. Wirtz & Wilhelm M. Müller & Florian W. Schmidt, 2021. "Digital Public Services in Smart Cities – an Empirical Analysis of Lead User Preferences," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 299-315, June.
    17. Karimikia, Hadi & Bradshaw, Robert & Singh, Harminder & Ojo, Adegboyega & Donnellan, Brian & Guerin, Michael, 2022. "An emergent taxonomy of boundary spanning in the smart city context – The case of smart Dublin," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    18. Minako Hara & Tomomi Nagao & Shinsuke Hannoe & Jiro Nakamura, 2016. "New Key Performance Indicators for a Smart Sustainable City," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(3), pages 1-19, March.
    19. Mora, Luca & Deakin, Mark & Reid, Alasdair, 2019. "Strategic principles for smart city development: A multiple case study analysis of European best practices," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 70-97.
    20. Munan Li, 2019. "Visualizing the studies on smart cities in the past two decades: a two-dimensional perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(2), pages 683-705, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:55:y:2018:i:4:p:679-701. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.