{"id":1617,"date":"2018-11-22T10:22:36","date_gmt":"2018-11-22T10:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/?p=1617"},"modified":"2018-11-22T14:33:29","modified_gmt":"2018-11-22T14:33:29","slug":"the-challenges-of-smart-city-mobilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/the-challenges-of-smart-city-mobilities\/","title":{"rendered":"The challenges of smart city mobilities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Smart urbanisation is one of the main approaches for cities around the world to realise their social, environmental and economic goals.\u00a0 Applying the latest \u2018smart IT \u2018to augment transport, energy, communication and other urban systems and services that underpin everyday life in cities is seen increasingly as necessary and desirable.\u00a0 However, research shows that there is no such thing as <em>the\u00a0<\/em>(singular) smart city.\u00a0 Instead actually existing smart cities are patchworks of somewhat opportunistic, experimental initiatives distributed across urban areas.\u00a0 Here, smart city initiatives often aim to simultaneously augment the management of the city in which they are situated and provide opportunities to create smart city solutions which may be exported elsewhere. \u00a0Although urban innovations such as policy frames, infrastructure and service designs circulate among cities, the purposive management of such mobilities in pursuit of \u00a0impactful, fair and equitable outcomes can be challenging.<\/p>\n<p>Urban planning is littered with initiatives in which city designs (e.g. neighbourhood units) were abstracted from major urban areas, transferred and applied elsewhere.\u00a0 Here solutions are often imposed on the periphery, which assume an evolutionary relation between the core and periphery (the periphery will experience what the core has in the past) or perhaps a relation of unequal importance, as what happens at the core is much more important and may effect the periphery in some sort of catalysing way.\u00a0 \u00a0In both cases the periphery is expected to pay close attention to what happens at the core, but the reverse may not be necessary implying unequal distribution. \u00a0And further, there may be significant challenges for urban areas from which exports are to be abstracted for replication and up-scaling elsewhere.\u00a0 Here the main benefits of smart city initiatives may only manifest in receiving cities, while the city in which the innovation was first developed may experience \u2018teething problems\u2019 and poor performance.\u00a0 Again, implying an unequal distribution.<\/p>\n<p>As austerity in various countries such as the UK continues this opportunistic, experimental governance modality may perpetuate and even extend.\u00a0 We must learn from the mistakes of the past and avoid the uncritical development, transfer and application of mobile smart urban concepts, i.e. a modular urbanism.\u00a0\u00a0While colonial relations may no longer be explicit notions of core and periphery may be surprisingly obdurate and embodied in notions of lead and follower cities.\u00a0 Mobile urban solutions embody urban problems and these must resonate with and attend to the needs of the receiving city.\u00a0 Thus ways to enable policy makers to make good and informed decisions about mobile urban innovations need to be found.\u00a0 And we also need to think carefully about how cities can develop and initiatives which provide opportunities for outward flows but also contribute to the cities in which they are situated.\u00a0 Smart initiatives should be able to both benefit the cities in which they are situated and provide exportable solutions which may assist developments in other cities.\u00a0 Such initiatives are unlikely to be locked in a zero sum game where an increase in local benefit causes a corresponding decline in exportability and vice versa.\u00a0Various mechanisms such as patents are used to enable firms to appropriate returns on investment in innovation.\u00a0 Perhaps similar mechanisms can be found for cities to resolve these tensions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Smart urbanisation is one of the main approaches for cities around the world to realise their social, environmental and economic goals.\u00a0 Applying the latest \u2018smart IT \u2018to augment transport, energy, communication and other urban systems and services that underpin everyday life in cities is seen increasingly as necessary and desirable.\u00a0 However, research shows that there 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