The Smart Enough City

tech goggles are grounded in two beliefs: first, that technology provides neutral and optimal solutions to social problems, and second, that technology is the primary mechanism of social change.

We become stuck asking a meaningless, tautological question—is a smart city preferable to a dumb city?—instead of debating a more fundamental one: does the smart city represent the urban future that best fosters democracy, justice, and equity?

Nobody wants crime, but if preventing it means perpetuating discriminatory practices, what kinds of cities are we poised to create?

Connecting to the public Wi-Fi network therefore comes at the cost of providing data about your location and behavior to private companies. Everybody desires better public services, but if deploying them entails setting up corporate surveillance nodes throughout urban centers, what kinds of cities are we poised to create?

the smart city in fact represents a drastic and myopic reconceptualization of cities into technology problems.

To technologists, the benefits of enhanced efficiency are so obvious that the smart city transcends social and political debate—nay, renders it obsolete. Of course,

The first is that the most impactful applications of technology occur when it is deployed in conjunction with other forms of innovation.

Technologists can have big positive impacts on cities only by marrying deep technical skills with careful program design and an empathetic embrace of the complexity and contradictions of city life.

with a keen awareness of the many nontechnological barriers to using technology in government, Smart Enough Cities recognize that technology will have little impact unless it is thoughtfully embedded into municipal structures and practices.