I am decompressing after our Global Governance of Post-Smart Cities workshop last week: a fabulous few days of discussion at the intersection of space, cities, political economy, history, media and technology. There was no audience, no preconceived outcome, just some of my favourite scholars brought together for a few gorgeous autumn days in Ottawa to talk about ideas. This is what academia should be about but very rarely is.
The concept of the “post-smart city” is a deliberately provocative term, which I and several others have proposed, and which I am exploring in my current research. What I am trying to capture here is the plethora of different things that seems to be emerging out of the concept of the smart city, e.g. Platform Cities, AI Cities, Super Cities, Cognitive Cities, right through to weirdness like the Network State, and the bringing then together with libertarian and national projects for new cities as permanent experiments. I am thinking of “post-” very much in the sense of “post-modern” or “post-structural” in which the “post-” doesn’t indicate that the thing has been superseded but that it includes and builds on it taking it in new directions. However, I am also thinking of Latour’s critique that “we have never been modern.” Maybe we are in a post-smart situation, but have never really been smart… In any case, as a provocation for discussion, it worked really well in this context.
The main sessions were as follows:
- “Zones of Interest” – Neoliberal Cities
- “My Own Private Idaho” – Libertarian Cities
- “From the Internet, Up” – Platform and Media Cities
- “Fitter, Happier, More Productive…” – From Smart to AI Cities
- “Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss” – (Post-)Colonial Cities
- “Cleaner, Greener, Meaner…” – (Un)Sustainable Cities
- “A New Life Awaits You in the Offworld Colonies” – Extraplanetary Cities
I originally gave a prompt for each and encouraged the leaders of each session to do what they wanted with the subject. In the end, most adopted a fairly conventional presentation and discussion format, and the discussion was great but I am wondering how to do things even more differently next time:
There was a also a public event, on the first evening of the workshop, Rethinking our Futures in an Age of Crisis, featuring Quinn Slobodian, Ayona Datta, Orit Halphen and Nick Couldry in conversation with me. There will be further reflections and eventually a full report published by CIGI Online.
An enormous thank-you to…
My co-organizers: Vincent Mirza and Azadeh Akbari.
Those who accepted our curious invitation: Rowland Atkinson, Ilia Antenucci, Yung Au, Kelly Bronson, Nick Couldry, Raymond Craib, Federico Cugurullo, Ayona Datta, Mehdi Ghassemi, Orit Halpern, Olivier Jutel, Roger Keil, Casey Lynch, Tim Maughan, Kevin McMillan, Carolyn Prouse, Renée Sieber, Isabelle Simpson, Quinn Slobodian, Alina Utrata, Niloufar Vadiati, Catherine Vandermeulen, Dwayne Winseck, Liam Cole Young.
CSS/Lab and CLTS grads and postdocs: Jennie Day, David Eliot, Zimo Meng, Claire Wang, Aiden Bradley and Gabriella di Biaggi.
Those who wanted to be here but were unable to come because of inequitable visa and immigration systems and the climate of fear: Hend Ali and Ahmed M Eleish.
Our funders: SSHRC-CRSH Connection Grants, the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), and the Research Center for the Future of Cities, and the Centre for Law, Technology and Society (CLTS), both at the University of Ottawa.
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