The last decade has seen crucial critical sociologies, geographies, histories and ethnographies of “the actually existing smart city” and so-called paradigmatic smart cities (Shelton, Zook & Wiig, 2015). As a consequence of these efforts, critical urban scholars across the social sciences and humanities can now apply established theoretical notions and normative concepts in unearthing the neoliberal premises and implications of smart cities.
However, are these crucial scholarly exposés and (re-)politicizations of current smart city practices “enough” to imagine and enact radically different smart cities? What have these analyses enabled, where do they fall short, who do they exclude, and is it not time to move beyond them? Moreover, how do smart city critiques and activist scholars relate to civil society campaigns and political movements that claim the right to the (future) smart city? What are the affordances and constraints of academic analyses? Is it at all possible to radically re-imagine future smart cities within the current (post-) political economies of smart city thinking and academia today?
This two-day expert symposium aims to provide the time and space to reflect and act upon these kinds of questions.
Conference title Beyond smart cities today
When? 18 and 19 September, 2019
Where? Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Hosts Centre for BOLD Cities, Erasmus Institute for Public Knowledge, Knowledge Lab Urban Big Data, Erasmus Initiative Vital Cities and Citizens.
Queries and abstracts to Jiska Engelbert, engelbert@eshcc.eur.nl
Deadline abstracts 20 June 2019
Confirmed keynotes
Rob Kitchin (Maynooth University)
Ayona Datta (King’s College)
Alberto Vanolo (University of Turin)
Maria Kaika (University of Amsterdam)
Willem Schinkel (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Bianca Wylie (Tech Reset Canada & #BlockSidewalk)
Michiel de Lange (Utrecht University)
Carina Listerborn (University of Malmö)
Dorien Zandbergen (University of Amsterdam & GR1P Foundation)
Linda Kool (Rathenau Institute)
Liesbet van Zoonen (Erasmus University, LDE Centre for BOLD Cities)