IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v58y2021i3p601-620.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Placebo urban interventions: Observing Smart City narratives in Santiago de Chile

Author

Listed:
  • Paola Jirón

    (University of Chile, Chile)

  • Walter A Imilán

    (Central University of Chile, Chile)

  • Carlos Lange

    (University of Chile, Chile)

  • Pablo Mansilla

    (Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaiso, Chile)

Abstract

The implementation of the Smart City (SC) model in Santiago, Chile has not heralded any significant interventions in terms of scale, urban impact, amount invested, technological innovation or architectural design. Instead, material interventions have been small and have had little more than a superficial impact upon the perceptions of citizens. The significance of observing ‘Smart’ interventions in Santiago involves analysing their implementation under a provincialising lens in order to observe the way local experience transforms monist ways of thinking about SCs. Based on ethnographic observation of an SC intervention (in Paseo Bandera, Santiago de Chile), four principles of intervention were identified: democratisation of the city, spatial appropriation by citizens, social and technological innovation and local and territorialised interventions. These principles help to identify the intervention as an urban placebo, which the article argues works through the fictions of effective interventions and urban image improvement that seek to participate in worlding practices whilst, in reality, very little is being improved or effectively addressed in the city. Paseo Bandera SC intervention presents a narrative of modern, sustainable and technologically advanced urban planning in the form of specific material interventions, when in fact it involves very little modernity, sustainability or technology, and is little more than a continuation and evolution of the neoliberal urban model that exists in Chile.

Suggested Citation

  • Paola Jirón & Walter A Imilán & Carlos Lange & Pablo Mansilla, 2021. "Placebo urban interventions: Observing Smart City narratives in Santiago de Chile," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(3), pages 601-620, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:58:y:2021:i:3:p:601-620
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098020943426
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098020943426
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0042098020943426?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. Michael Goldman, 2011. "Speculative Urbanism and the Making of the Next World City," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(3), pages 555-581, May.
    2. Zipan Cai & Vladimir Cvetkovic & Jessica Page, 2020. "How Does ICT Expansion Drive “Smart” Urban Growth? A Case Study of Nanjing, China," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(1), pages 129-139.
    3. Helga Leitner & Eric Sheppard, 2016. "Provincializing Critical Urban Theory: Extending the Ecosystem of Possibilities," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(1), pages 228-235, January.
    4. Robert G. Hollands, 2008. "Will the real smart city please stand up?," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(3), pages 303-320, December.
    5. Ola Söderström & Till Paasche & Francisco Klauser, 2014. "Smart cities as corporate storytelling," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(3), pages 307-320, June.
    6. María Yáñez & Patricio Mansilla & Juan de Ortúzar, 2010. "The Santiago Panel: measuring the effects of implementing Transantiago," Transportation, Springer, vol. 37(1), pages 125-149, January.
    7. Neil Brenner & Nik Theodore, 2005. "Neoliberalism and the urban condition," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 101-107, April.
    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. Tooran Alizadeh & Deepti Prasad, 2024. "The right to the smart city in the Global South: A research agenda," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(3), pages 426-444, February.
    2. Monika Büscher & Cronan Cronshaw & Alistair Kirkbride & Nicola Spurling, 2023. "Making Response-Ability: Societal Readiness Assessment for Sustainability Governance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-23, March.
    3. Ryan Anders Whitney & David López-García, 2023. "Fast-track institutionalization: The opening of urban planning best practice agencies in Mexico City," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 41(3), pages 600-616, May.
    4. 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.
    5. Mikołaj Biesaga & Anna Domaradzka & Magdalena Roszczyńska-Kurasińska & Szymon Talaga & Andrzej Nowak, 2023. "The effect of the pandemic on European narratives on smart cities and surveillance," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(10), pages 1894-1914, August.
    6. Clara Irazábal & Paola Jirón, 2021. "Latin American smart cities: Between worlding infatuation and crawling provincialising," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(3), pages 507-534, February.
    7. Kerry Bobbins & Federico Caprotti & Jiska de Groot & Whitney Pailman & Mascha Moorlach & Hendrik Schloemann & Alex Densmore & Kimenthrie Finlay & Ellen Fischat & Siseko Siwali & Joslyn Links, 2024. "Smart and disruptive infrastructures: Re-building knowledge on the informal city," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(1), pages 165-179, January.
    8. Catalina Ortiz, 2024. "Writing the Latin American city: Trajectories of urban scholarship," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(3), pages 399-425, February.
    9. Byron Miller & Kevin Ward & Ryan Burns & Victoria Fast & Anthony Levenda, 2021. "Worlding and provincialising smart cities: From individual case studies to a global comparative research agenda," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(3), pages 655-673, February.

    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. Ebru Tekin Bilbil, 2017. "The Operationalizing Aspects of Smart Cities: the Case of Turkey’s Smart Strategies," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 8(3), pages 1032-1048, September.
    2. Leslie Quitzow & Friederike Rohde, 2022. "Imagining the smart city through smart grids? Urban energy futures between technological experimentation and the imagined low-carbon city," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 59(2), pages 341-359, February.
    3. Johannes Stübinger & Lucas Schneider, 2020. "Understanding Smart City—A Data-Driven Literature Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(20), pages 1-23, October.
    4. Lill Sarv & Ralf-Martin Soe, 2021. "Transition towards Smart City: The Case of Tallinn," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-18, April.
    5. Quitzow, Leslie & Rohde, Friederike, 2022. "Imagining the smart city through smart grids? Urban energy futures between technological experimentation and the imagined low-carbon city," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 59(2), pages 341-359.
    6. Zaheer Allam & Ayyoob Sharifi & Simon Elias Bibri & Didier Chabaud, 2022. "Emerging Trends and Knowledge Structures of Smart Urban Governance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(9), pages 1-29, April.
    7. Nielsen, Brita Fladvad & Baer, Daniela & Lindkvist, Carmel, 2019. "Identifying and supporting exploratory and exploitative models of innovation in municipal urban planning; key challenges from seven Norwegian energy ambitious neighborhood pilots," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 142-153.
    8. Seema Mundoli & Hita Unnikrishnan & Harini Nagendra, 2017. "The “Sustainable” in smart cities: ignoring the importance of urban ecosystems," DECISION: Official Journal of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Springer;Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, vol. 44(2), pages 103-120, June.
    9. Philip Cooke, 2022. "Beyond the Smart or Resilient City: In Search of Sustainability in the Sojan Thirdspace," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-17, December.
    10. 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.
    11. van den Buuse, Daniel & Kolk, Ans, 2019. "An exploration of smart city approaches by international ICT firms," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 220-234.
    12. 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.
    13. I-Chun Catherine Chang & Sue-Ching Jou & Ming-Kuang Chung, 2021. "Provincialising smart urbanism in Taipei: The smart city as a strategy for urban regime transition," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(3), pages 559-580, February.
    14. Kummitha, Rama Krishna Reddy, 2018. "Entrepreneurial urbanism and technological panacea: Why Smart City planning needs to go beyond corporate visioning?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 330-339.
    15. Jun Zhang & Shuyang Li & Yichuan Wang, 2023. "Shaping a Smart Transportation System for Sustainable Value Co-Creation," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 365-380, February.
    16. Dimitar Anguelov, 2023. "Financializing urban infrastructure? The speculative state-spaces of ‘public-public partnerships’ in Jakarta," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 55(2), pages 445-470, March.
    17. Parul Gupta & Sumedha Chauhan & M. P. Jaiswal, 2019. "Classification of Smart City Research - a Descriptive Literature Review and Future Research Agenda," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 661-685, June.
    18. Huaxiong Jiang & Stan Geertman & Patrick Witte, 2020. "Avoiding the planning support system pitfalls? What smart governance can learn from the planning support system implementation gap," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 47(8), pages 1343-1360, October.
    19. Kitchin, Rob & Cardullo, Paolo & Di Feliciantonio, Cesare, 2018. "Citizenship, Justice and the Right to the Smart City," SocArXiv b8aq5, Center for Open Science.
    20. Mary Lawhon & Yaffa Truelove, 2020. "Disambiguating the southern urban critique: Propositions, pathways and possibilities for a more global urban studies," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(1), pages 3-20, January.

    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:58:y:2021:i:3:p:601-620. 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.