In the contemporary moment, smart cities have become the dominant paradigm for urban planning and administration, which involves weaving the urban fabric with digital technologies. Recently, however, the promises of smart cities have been gradually supplanted by recognition of their inherent inequalities, and scholars are increasingly working to envision alternative smart cities. Informed by these pressing challenges, Digital (In)Justice in the Smart City foregrounds discussions of how we should think of and work towards urban digital justice in the smart city. It provides a deep exploration of the sources of injustice that percolate throughout a range of sociotechnical assemblages, and it questions whether working towards more just, sustainable, liveable, and egalitarian cities requires that we look beyond the limitations of "smartness" altogether. The book grapples with how geographies impact smart city visions and roll-outs, on the one hand, and how (unjust) geographies are produced in smart pursuits, on the other. Ultimately, Digital (In)Justice in the Smart City envisions alternative cities – smart or merely digital – and outlines the sorts of roles that the commons, utopia, and the law might take on in our conceptions and realizations of better cities.

This book explores relations between smartness and social justice, and questions whether working toward more just and sustainable cities requires that we look beyond the limitations of smartness altogether.

This book examines how contemporary urbanism is influenced by digital and low carbon transitions. From its infancy at the scale of individual buildings, a focus on ‘green’ agenda, energy, and resource efficiency has fostered research and policies for low carbon cities, eco-cities, and increasingly intelligent and smarter urban systems. Cities around the world are getting ‘smarter’ as more advanced technology is integrated into urban planning and design. People are relying more on digital and information and communication technology (ICT) in their daily lives, while cities are adopting more digital technology to monitor and gather information about people and their environment. This leads to Big Data collection, which is used to inform governance and improve urban performance. These transformations, however, raise critical questions, including whether emerging smart sustainable cities are too technocratic, but also with regard to citizen involvement. This brief addresses these important contemporary concerns through a review of literature and existing urban strategies. It should be of interest to everyone involved in advancing sustainable cities and smart cities. It should also be a relevant read for students and researchers in this area.

The concept of smart cities holds environmental promises: that digital technologies will reduce carbon emissions, air pollution and waste, and help address climate change. Drawing on academic scholarship and two case studies from Manchester and Helsinki, this timely and accessible book examines what happens when these promises are broken, as they prioritise technological innovation rather than environmental care. The book reveals that smart cities’ vision of sustainable digital future obfuscates the environmental harms and social injustices that digitisation inflicts. The framework of “broken promises”, coined by the authors, centres environmental questions in analysing imaginaries and practices of smart cities. This is a must read for anyone interested in the connections between digital technologies and environment justice.

The Routledge Companion to Smart Cities explores the question of what it means for a city to be ‘smart’, raises some of the tensions emerging in smart city developments and considers the implications for future ways of inhabiting and understanding the urban condition. The volume draws together a critical and cross-disciplinary overview of the emerging topic of smart cities and explores it from a range of theoretical and empirical viewpoints. This timely book brings together key thinkers and projects from a wide range of fields and perspectives into one volume to provide a valuable resource that would enable the reader to take their own critical position within the topic. To situate the topic of the smart city for the reader and establish key concepts, the volume sets out the various interpretations and aspects of what constitutes and defines smart cities. It investigates and considers the range of factors that shape the characteristics of smart cities and draws together different disciplinary perspectives. The consideration of what shapes the smart city is explored through discussing three broad ‘parts’ – issues of governance, the nature of urban development and how visions are realised – and includes chapters that draw on empirical studies to frame the discussion with an understanding not just of the nature of the smart city but also how it is studied, understood and reflected upon. The Companion will appeal to academics and advanced undergraduates and postgraduates from across many disciplines including Urban Studies, Geography, Urban Planning, Sociology and Architecture, by providing state of the art reviews of key themes by leading scholars in the field, arranged under clearly themed sections.

Globally, Smart Cities initiatives are pursued which reproduce the interests of capital and neoliberal government, rather than wider public good. This book explores smart urbanism and 'the right to the city', examining citizenship, social justice, commoning, civic participation, and co-creation to imagine a different kind of Smart City.

Smart technologies have advanced rapidly throughout our society (e.g. smart energy, smart health, smart living, smart cities, smart environment, and smart society) and across geographic spaces and places. Behind these "smart" developments are a number of seminal drivers, such as social media (e.g. Twitter), sensors (drones, wearables), smartphone apps, and computing infrastructure (e.g. cloud computing). These developments have captured the enthusiasm of the public, while inevitably present unprecedented challenges and opportunities for the geographic research community. When meeting the smart challenges, are there emerging theories, methods, and observations that reveal new spatial phenomena, produce new knowledge, and foster new policies? Smart Spaces and Places addresses questions such as how to make spaces and places "smart", how the "smartness" affects the way we think spaces and places, and what role geographies play in knowledge production and decision-making in a "smart" era. The collection of 21 chapters offers stimulating discussion over the meaning of spaces, places, and smartness; scientific insights into smartness; social-political views of smartness; and policy implications of smartness. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

Challenging the assumption that access to technology is pervasive and globally balanced, this book explores the real and potential limitations placed on young people’s literacy education by their limited access to technology and digital resources. Drawing on research studies from around the globe, Stories from Inequity to Justice in Literacy Education identifies social, economic, racial, political and geographical factors which can limit populations’ access to technology, and outlines the negative impact this can have on literacy attainment. Reflecting macro, meso and micro inequities, chapters highlight complex issues surrounding the productive use of technology and the mobilization of multimodal texts for academic performance and illustrate how digital divides might be remedied to resolve inequities in learning environments and beyond. Contesting the digital divides which are implicitly embedded in aspects of everyday life and learning, this text will be of great interest to researchers and post-graduate academics in the field of literacy education.

This book provides a thorough guide to building resilient cities, through the use of smart solutions enabled by information and communication technologies. It introduces innovative approaches for integrating smart solutions into urban resilience planning and offers numerous global case studies to illustrate the benefits of the theories discussed. Against a background of increased natural disasters, pandemics, and climate change, this book answers research questions such as: • Do smart city projects contribute to urban climate resilience? • What are the indicators of smart city resilience? • What procedures should be taken to improve efficacy of smart city solutions? • What are the opportunities and challenges for promoting smart city resilience and for integrating resilience thinking into smart city planning? Including contributions from international experts, explanatory illustrations, and data-driven tables, this book is of interest to researchers, policymakers, and graduate students focused on developing more sustainable, smart, and resilient cities.

How is life in digital cities changing what it means to be human? In this perceptive book, Myria Georgiou sets out to investigate the new configuration of social order that is taking shape in today’s cities. Although routed through extractive datafication, compulsive connectivity, and regulatory AI technologies, this digital order nonetheless displaces technocentrism and instead promotes new visions of humanism, all in the name of freedom, diversity, and sustainability. But the digital order emerges in the midst of neoliberal instability and crises, resulting in a plurality of contrasting responses to securing digitally mediated human progress. While corporate, media, and state actors mobilize such positive sociotechnical imaginaries to promise digitally mediated human progress, urban citizens and social movements propose alternative pathways to autonomy and dignity through and sometimes against digital technologies. Investigating the dynamic workings of technology and power from a transnational and comparative perspective, this book reveals the contradictory claims and struggles for the future of digital cities and their humanity. In doing so, it will enrich understandings of digital urbanism, critical data studies, and critical humanist studies.​