“An emerging critique of the technology sector is that it promotes inequalities rather than mitigates them. Exposes about Silicon Valley’s discriminatory human resources practices are outnumbered only by stories of predatory business practices. As noted throughout this book, economic geographers have long argued that firm strategies reflect the context from which they emerged. So, as technology firms turn their attention to cities, it should be understood that they are likely to employ the approaches and practices they know from the past rather than adapt to the ethics and standards of the public sector or specific communities.
The smart cities project provides a platform for economic development; it is not economic development by itself. And perhaps this is the key distinction moving forward. As cities and observers of the smart cities project become increasingly cognizant of the inequalities that are produced and magnified in the diffusion of new technologies, it might be the responsibility of the public sector to step up and intervene, not step back and allow the people and places to be cast as users and testbeds in an industry experiment rather than as citizens and communities in a city.
In her 1980 article, “What Would a Non-Sexist City Be Like?” Dolores Hayden asked readers to consider – to visualize – how to produce a city that did not reflect the institutionalized gendered norms that framed decisions about the design of an investments in our built environments (and the systems and services that operate it). Similarly, Carlo Ratti asked us to visualize a city that is tailored to the needs of individuals. Hayden and Ratti are making different arguments, of course; Ratti is arguing for a technology solution, and Hayden is arguing for a shift in the patterns of social reproduction. Hayden’s argument is simple: perhaps stop reproducing structural inequalities in structures. Hayden called for redesigning the American dream through an analysis of how we produce the built environment and why. That is still the underlying issue. All too often, smart cities advocates are more interesting in building (and experimenting) than in the systematic and sustained deconstruction of the old modes of production and the patterns of inequality they produce.
In this book, I have posed a variation on Hayden’s argument: stop reproducing uneven development patterns through technology solutions. Uneven innovation is a manifestation of an old problem: the sexist city, the racist city, the classist city, the city of unequal opportunities and unequal outcomes. I have also made two further points. First, cities are not the problem, but, second, cities may be the solution. Once the technology sector determined that cities were the preferred space of innovation, production, and consumption, cities gained the ability to manage and determine the smart cities project. Through the regulation of citizen rights to data, investment in the internal capacity within cities, the undertaking of strategic planning and policy analysis and evaluation, and the expansion of participatory planning, cities have an opportunity to shape the smart cities project. We may not see Hayden’s nonsexist city emerge as a result, but we may see a future for cities that moves further away from an unequal past and toward a more equitable future.”
