Social justice implications of smart urban technologies: an intersectional approach

Techno-optimistic visions around smart buildings, homes, cities, grids, healthcare, etc. have become ubiquitous over the past decade. Using variations of machine learning and artificial intelligence, smart urbanism (SU) envisions an efficient, digital society. However, research shows that smart technologies reinscribe inequalities by prioritising the interests of the free market, technology-centric governance and data monetisation. Although there has been a growing concern over the injustices SU perpetuates, there is a lack of systematic engagement with power systems such as capitalism or heterosexism that underpin SU visions. A novel framework is presented that situates intersectional justice at the heart of SU. A mapping of 70 cases of ‘trouble’ with the promises of SU is used to address three core research questions: What are the ‘troubles’ with SU? To what extent are they intersectional? What can intersectionality add to the development of a just SU? The analysis shows how SU politics play out in relation to how users are understood and engaged, how different actors institutionalise SU and how dominant power systems are challenged. The presented strategy contributes to understanding not just the data politics in urban spaces, but also how they can be renegotiated and re-evaluated to solve multiple and interconnected urban crises without compromising on social justice.

Practice relevance

Citizen-led initiatives against SU should commit to intersectionality’s radical core to dismantle power structures to ensure local smart urban projects do not entrench global business-as-usual neoliberal agendas. Intersectional thinking can create spaces for deliberative dialogues between civil society groups and build alliances across groups that seek to challenge the hegemony of exclusionary urban policies. Urban planners and local governments, which are at the forefront of SU applications, should decentre technologies and rather focus efforts on working out how smart technologies can work in conjunction with other kinds of urban interventions, such as social, economic and environmental policy changes, collaborative planning, community development, etc. to herald more just urban futures. Designers of smart urban technologies should apply intersectional approaches to further challenge ‘Homo economicus’ (rational, White, technophilic, able-bodied) as the primary user type and to replace it with diverse user archetypes that express humanity, justice and generosity.