Tag: ai

Smart Cities in China, Taiwan and Singapore

I’ve just been awarded a year-long SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant, which is surveying and summarizing the literature on (post-)smart cities from China, Taiwan and Singapore, in both Chinese and English languages.

Smart digital technologies are challenging the way we manage and govern our cities, and our imagination of their futures. The combination of technological, policy and social innovation in smart and now, post-smart cities generates both common global concerns and issues of policy-learning, co-operation and competition for Canada. China and the sinophone world are at the core of this cooperation and competition conundrum, with China being one of the largest developers of smart cities and smart technology in the world. This project will create a comprehensive database of national smart and post-smart city academic literature, national and sub-national policies and plans in Chinese and English, for China, Taiwan, and Singapore, with literature and policy summaries and reviews, and a program of government and policy and seminars. The work will be conducted by a combined team of native Chinese and English speakers at CSS/Lab. It is aimed at orienting Canadian policy on the governance of cities and technology, nationally and globally.

These three nation-states are vital to understanding the future governance of post-smart cities. China is a driving force of the worldwide market in the smart city sector, making up 13.8% of the global market in 2023, and estimated to grow from $103Bn US in 2023 and is to $550Bn US in 2030 These three nation-states are vital to understanding the future governance of post-smart cities. China is a driving force of the worldwide market in the smart city sector, making up 13.8% of the global market in 2023, and estimated to grow from $103Bn US in 2023 and is to $550Bn US in 2030 (according to Grand View Research), and with three cities in the Top 20 of the 2024 IMD Smart City Index (and a total of 10 in the Top 100). Singapore is the model for many other developers of post-smart cities, ranked 5th in the world in the 2024 IMD Smart City Index, and is itself a massive market for its size at almost 2% of the global total and estimated to grow from $14.4Bn US in 2023 to $102.0Bn US in 2030 (Grand View Research). Finally, Taiwan offers innovative policies on connected citizenship and state management of data (Chung et al. 2021), with Taipei ranked 16th in the 2024 IMD Smart City Index (IMD 2024). In contrast, despite some high-profile policies like the Smart Cities Challenge program, there are no Canadian Cities in the Top 20, or even the Top 40, of the 2024 IMD Smart City Index.  

There are two types of literature involved here in two different domains.

The first is scholarship. The applicant is already conducting extensive literature reviews of the anglophone and francophone literatures on smart and post-smart cities. Both the active planning and construction of smart and post-smart cities, and the study of smart and post-smart cities, are booming in the sinophone (Chinese-language) world, yet in the west, we are limited to presentations and publications by authors who have chosen to publish in conference proceedings and journals in languages other than Chinese, mainly English. We, in Canada, are therefore missing a great deal of research, which would also tell us more about sinophone understandings of the future governance of cities. This project would carry out a systematic cataloging of the Chinese-language literature on smart and post-smart cities, including translation of all titles, abstracts and keywords. 

The second is policy. The project also proposes to collate, catalog and summarize national and sub-national policy documents on smart and post-smart cities from China, Taiwan and Singapore, the three predominantly (or at least, partly) culturally Chinese governments. This project would carry out a systematic cataloging of Chinese, Taiwanese and Singaporean policy literature, that is policy documents, white papers, official discussion documents, national plans and competitions and so on, concerning smart and post-smart cities, including translation of all titles, summaries and keywords. Where summaries do not exist, they will be provided. 

Together this project offers vital resources that are important for our collective global imagination, but also in the immediate term for orienting Canadian domestic policy on the governance of cities and technology, nationally and globally.  

CSS/Lab launches soon…

Following the launch of my CRC, I am launching a new virtual research lab here at uOttawa. CSS/Lab is basically an envelop for my current projects (see Research). The here will be a website soon linked to CLTS here at uOttawa, but here is what will be on that site:

CSS/Lab 

research group on critical surveillance & security studies at uOttawa

About CSS/Lab

CSS/Lab (pronounced “slæb”) is built around the Canada Research Chair in Critical Surveillance & Security Studies at the University of Ottawa. 

CSS/Lab exists to examine, question and critique the ubiquity of surveillance at all scales from body to planet (and beyond). It is a transdisciplinary research group that brings surveillance studies into conversation with many other disciplines and fields. It aims to push surveillance studies in new directions, both in building critical social theories of surveillance and security, and through active empirical work in multiple locations and contexts.  

CSS/Lab Research

CSS/Lab’s current active projects consider:

  1. “Platform Cities in an Age of Planetary Surveillance” 
    • Surveillance and the governance of (post-)smart cities
    • Enclaves, Zones and City-States
  2. Planetary security and surveillance
    • Surveillance and authoritarianism
    • Surveillance and the climate crisis
    • Security intelligence agencies and the climate crisis
  3. Artificial Intelligence (AI), data and dataveillance
    • Genealogies of AI and the Internet of Things (IoT)
  4. “AI East/West” – an ongoing effort to bring scholars from Japan and Canada together to rethink the ethics and politics of AI
  5. “Hired Hackers and Private Spies” – private surveillance companies and the political economy of the surveillance industry
  6. “Speculative Security” – thinking positive global futures beyond dystopian surveillance scenarios 

CSS/Lab Director

David Murakami Wood

Canada Research Chair in Critical Surveillance & Security Studies / Full Professor, Department of Criminology / Co-editor-in-Chief, Surveillance & Society / Board of Directors, Surveillance Studies Network.

CSS/Lab Members

Azadeh Akbari, CCS/Lab Visiting Scholar, 2024-7 / Assistant Professor, University of Twente NL / European Commission Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSC) Global Fellow, “Authoritarian smart cities”

Jennie Day, CSS/Lab Postdoctoral Fellow, 2024-5, “Hired hackers and private spies”

Ashley Poon, PhD researcher, Department of Criminology, “Public perceptions of authoritarian surveillance policies”

David Eliot, PhD researcher, Department of Criminology / Trudeau Foundation Fellow, “A Genealogy of Artificial Intelligence”

Zimo Meng, PhD researcher, Department of Criminology / CSS/Lab Research Assistant, “(Post-)smart cities in China and Singapore”

Claire Wang, PhD researcher, Department of Criminology, “Surveillance and the Internet of Things”

CSS/Lab Associates (*more tbc)

Vincent Mirza, Associate Professor, School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies / Director, Research Centre on the Future of Cities

Valerie Steeves, Full Professor, Department of Criminology / Co-leader, e-quality Project.

CSS/Lab Connections

CCS/Lab is connected to several research centres and organizations across the University of Ottawa: 

CCS/Lab works globally: