مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد عدالت شهری در شهر هوشمند در دوره دیجیتال – تیلور و فرانسیس 2022

Abstract

Introduction

Nancy Fraser’s conceptualization of justice

Affirmative versus transformative remedies for injustices

Justice in critical literature on smart cities

Redistribution

Recognition

Representation

From the smart to the just city in the digital age

From affirmative to transformative strategies

Retaining and regaining technological sovereignty

Conclusions

Acknowledgements

References

Abstract

     The smart city is the most emblematic contemporary expression of the fusion of urbanism and digital technologies. Critical urban scholars are now increasingly likely to highlight the injustices that are created and exacerbated by emerging smart city initiatives and to diagnose the way that these projects remake urban space and urban policy in unjust ways. Despite this, there has not yet been a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the concept of justice in the smart city literature. To fill this gap and strengthen the smart city critique, we draw on the tripartite approach to justice developed by philosopher Nancy Fraser, which is focused on redistribution, recognition, and representation. We use this framework to outline key themes and identify gaps in existing critiques of the smart city, and to emphasize the importance of transformational approaches to justice that take shifts in governance seriously. In reformulating and expanding the existing critiques of the smart city, we argue for shifting the discussion away from the smart city as such. Rather than searching for an alternative smart city, we argue that critical scholars should focus on broader questions of urban justice in a digital age.

Introduction

     We live in an age where digitization, digital networks, big data, and internet-based infrastructures are ‘mediating and augmenting the production of space’ and in so doing, are ‘transforming socio-spatial relations’ (Ash, Kitchin, and Leszczynski 2018, 29). The smart city is an emblematic expression of these transformations where data, sensors, and algorithms are presented as technical solutions for urban problems. After initially being dominated by affirmative perspectives, since about 2014 an increasing number of critical views on the smart city have been published by geographers and urban scholars (amongst by now many others, see Cardullo and Kitchin 2019; Cugurullo 2018; Greenfield 2013; Hollands 2008, 2015; Kitchin 2016; Leszczynski 2016; Rose 2020; Söderström, Paasche, and Klauser 2014; Wiig and Wyly 2016), with some of the earliest and most cited critiques being published precisely in this journal (Hollands 2008; Söderström, Paasche, and Klauser 2014).

     Most of these critiques directly or indirectly invoke questions of justice; however, they rarely define its meaning. Consequently, the meaning of justice in critical smart city debates remains elusive and theoretically underdeveloped. This is despite the fact that critical urban geographers have of course long engaged with concepts of social justice, from Lefebvre’s (2003 [1970]) call for the right to the city, further developed for example by Marcuse et al. (2009) and Brenner, Marcuse, and Mayer (2009), to questions of spatial justice (Soja 2010; Marcuse 2009; Fainstein 2009), to Harvey’s (1973) seminal work on justice and the city, to interventions like Fainstein (2010) which highlight the importance of participatory engagement to expand understandings of urban justice (for on overview on some of them with reference to the smart city see Kitchin, Cardullo, and Di Feliciantonio 2019; for an application of David Harvey’s social justice theory on questions of the smart city see Vanolo 2019).

Conclusions

     We are currently observing the increasing centrality of digital technologies in public discourse, proposed as responses to current social and political problems of the city. In this article, we presented a comprehensive definition and framework of justice to guide progressive efforts in assessing and reimagining smart city initiatives and argued for transformative remedies for injustice. Building on Fraser’s tripartite framework, we examined justice in critical smart city literature along economic, social, and political lines. We observed notable tensions, marked by a recognition on the one hand of the ways in which digital practices mediate and reinforce domination, dispossession, disenfranchisement, and social differentiation, and on the other, a desire to exploit the emancipatory potential of digital practices as sites of generative possibility for thinking, acting, and being otherwise. In assessing visions of alternative smart cities, we highlighted the need for transformational change, for instance, through technology sovereignty movements which provide collective ownership of data-intensive digital and algorithmic platforms and services.