“Digital city,” “smart city,” “cyber-city,” “intelligent city”; we have all heard these terms at some point—on television or in films, and more recently in the news. Although often used inconsistently, sometimes even interchangeably, such phrases have become culturally ubiquitous, and futuristic visions of cities as radically transformed by digital technologies have appeared within popular cultural narratives for decades. William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy books, 1 for instance, were perhaps some of the earliest works of fiction to describe futuristic cities as densely packed landscapes of digital urbanism. Within Gibson’s virtual world of the matrix, to which the protagonist in Neuromancer retreats, “bright lattices of logic” unfold, revealing “clusters and constellations of data.” 2 Cyberspace becomes analogous to “city lights receding,” the borders between the city and cyberspace become blurred, and corporations turn into new pseudo-governments. And in a more recent novel by Matthew Mather, author of multiple books of fiction about the futuristic intersections between digital technologies and various environmental threats, The Atopia Chronicles 3 explores the creation of a corporate-owned, urban virtual reality island called “Atopia,” designed for elites to escape the overly populated, highly techno-stimulating, and polluted world of Earth. In Mather’s futuristic account, technology becomes both the problem and the solution, and under the control of capitalism, reaches its anticipated demise. The science fiction genre, of course, almost always offers rather dystopian counterpoints to the popular utopian narratives of both cyberspace and futuristic cities, as well as allegories for increasing global wealth disparities in the technological age. And as science fiction and techno-thriller writers like Gibson and Mather look into their digital futures, what they imagine and articulate is quite fantastic, but also often prescient. So what does the “digital city” look like today? As William Gibson remarked on numerous occasions, “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” 4
A number of governments in cities around the world have officially adopted such terms as “smart,” “digital,” and “cyber” to help characterize their digital technological initiatives and programs, signaling a phenomenon wherein cities are increasingly characterized by their reliance on digital technologies to facilitate and manage urban life. As major urban centers, composed of demographically diverse, pluralized cultures that must constantly renegotiate with each other, the city also has become the ideal—and often idealized—space for interclass contact that, at least rhetorically, promises independence and social, economic, and cultural opportunities and enrichment. 5 Meanwhile, as the rapid growth of urban populations place a tremendous burden on urban infrastructures, both scholars and governmental and urban planning professionals are either looking to digital technologies to provide solutions to a variety of urban problems or are raising concerns about the intersections of urban space and technologies.
In 2015, the US Census Bureau released a report 6 that confirmed a growing trend toward greater urban density; while just 3.5 % of land in the USA contained cities, 62.7 % of the population resided in cities. And between 2010 and 2013, 17 new cities were incorporated, and one of the highest increases in population density for cities with more than 100,000 people occurred in New York City (NYC). 7 While tracking urban populations worldwide becomes a bit more tricky, given the multiplicity of data sources, most reports concur that we have already reached the point where more than half the world population now reside in cities. In the 2014, revision of the World Urbanization Prospects report 8 by the United Nations (UN), for instance, 54 % of the world’s population currently lives in urban areas, and urban populations are predicted to rise to around 66 % by 2050; mega-cities (with more than ten million inhabitants) are steadily increasing; and small cities continue to be created and/or are growing rapidly. The UN report thus concluded that sustainable urbanization will be the key to the future success of cities worldwide 9 , and many cities are turning to the use of digital technologies and data to solve some of the pressures inherent in such massive population growth.
In the USA, even before he took the office of the presidency, Barack Obama made it clear that he believed technology was imperative for the nation’s economic health. “Let us be the generation that reshapes our economy to compete in the digital age,” 10 he remarked in his presidential announcement in Springfield, Illinois, in February, 2007. And throughout his presidency, Obama initiated a series of programs, policies, and strategies aimed to ensure the USA would be prosperous in the global digital economy. 11 And near the end of his administration, in September, 2015, Obama announced a new federal “smart cities” initiative, in which over $160 million would be earmarked to support programs that leverage technologies in the fight against climate change. 12
The goal of this book is to begin to unpack some of the “digital city” rhetoric and discourse and examine a number of urban digital technological initiatives and programs so that we can better understand some of the socio-economic implications of urban digitization and its impact on urban ecosystems. In the news, for instance, we can regularly read accounts of how governmental adoption of digital technologies and open data will help facilitate smarter, more efficient cities, boost local economies and entrepreneurship, create more informed citizens, strengthen civic engagement, and foster inclusivity. Digital technologies and platforms, as is often suggested, will also make government officials more accountable, help bridge the digital divide, increase local and national security, and improve residents’ overall quality of life. But as I explore in this book, while a number of city-sponsored digital and smart programs certainly begin to address a number of challenges faced by today’s cities, these same technologies also raise myriad concerns. For example, while certain smartphone apps allow residents to report crime or neighborhood disturbances, which city officials often suggest will help make neighborhoods safer, the data collected—particularly when publicly visualized on open data platforms or translated into crime maps—also has the potential to increase neighborhood profiling and have deleterious socio-economic impacts on that same community.
Under the aegis of the “digital city,” this book offers a critical analysis of the digital technological initiatives and programs of three major cities in the USA (NYC, San Antonio, and Seattle) and each city’s claim to be a “digital,” “cyber,” and “smart” city. I examine each city’s claims, what conditions—or what combination of events—prompted major digital technological agendas in the first place, and the power structures that subtend and inflect the digital city, particularly as these power relationships connect to the meaning of the contemporary city and mobilize certain ideological discourses. While this book focuses primarily on urban policies, trends, and specific challenges and goals of the use of digital technologies within the USA, it nevertheless reflects how urban environments around the world are being increasingly mediated by digital technologies. And an in-depth analysis of these three case studies enables us to begin to understand the greater global implications that exist, as digital technologies are being built into the logic and organization of urban spaces. On an international scale, cities increasingly rely on similar digital and smart technologies to help govern, work toward urban sustainability, increase cyber-security efforts, bridge the digital divide, and collect and aggregate data for the purposes of urban policy and renewal projects. But while the revitalization of cities, more broadly, is generally perceived by leading civic and commercial entities as in the best interests of the public, my research shows that many of these urban projects are typically driven by a smaller number of privileged agents (politicians, corporate executives, financial entrepreneurs, and institutional leaders, for instance) with access to considerable economic, social, cultural, and political capital. So while an examination of these three cities more accurately reflects US social, political, and economic trends, this book also emphasizes the need to be more critical of the digitalization of cities worldwide.
While each city’s digital initiatives focus on distinct goals, are implemented and function in different ways, and emerge out of dissimilar socio-economic, geographical, and historical contexts, NYC, San Antonio, and Seattle all emphasize the importance of providing all residents with the technological tools to survive in what is often cast as an inevitably digitalized world. And each city claims that becoming “digital” will stimulate economic, civil, or social growth and improve residents’ quality of life. In 2011 and in collaboration with dozens of public and private stakeholders, for instance, NYC’s then Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chief Digital Officer, Rachel Haot, released a comprehensive plan entitled Road Map for the Digital City 13 in the hopes of making NYC the world’s top-ranked “digital city.” Key goals articulated within this strategic plan include the use of digital technologies to enhance open government, increase citizen engagement, and support the overall health of civic society. As a major hub of international commerce and culture, and as NYC is one of a handful of cities leading international efforts in urban digitalization, it is important to consider NYC’s governmental use of digital programs and platforms, such as social media, aggregated data, and smartphone applications, as well as the acquisition and potential power of governmentally owned top-level domains.
San Antonio, as “Cybercity, USA,” asserts its role as the cyber-security hub of the USA. But as home to one of the largest concentrations of intelligence and military entities in the world, the city’s digital technological initiatives and deep connections to major cyber-security industries reflect a problematic approach to local governance. San Antonio’s security borders now extend to all of cyberspace, and city officials regularly call upon their residents to join the war on cyber-terrorism; however, what exactly is the citizen’s relationship to the cyber-security state? And does CyberCity, USA’s relationship with the military and security industry potentially threaten or subvert democratic practice? The manifestation of CyberCity, USA, I argue, indicates a growing trend toward the militarization of cyberspace, as recent governmental discourse advocates for increased cyber-security and control over the Internet to ward off what appears to be the most recent looming geo-spatial threat—cyber-attacks.
Seattle, as a “smart city,” becomes representative of how many large cities, under the pressure of global trends of rapid urbanization, combined with global warming and increased climate deterioration, increasingly embrace “smart city” models of governance and urban planning. However, while the use of certain digital technologies and initiatives (such as integrating smart technologies into the city’s infrastructure to help regulate and manage traffic flow) can be useful tools of smart growth, one of the questions raised by Seattle’s claims is whether and how much of this smart city discourse is substantiated by actual policies and principles that support smart growth and, more specifically, equity within urban sustainability.
I contend that while always articulated as operating in the best interests of the public and often presented as a panacea to various social problems, many of these digital technological programs, leaning heavily on ideals of open democracy, individual liberty, security, and consumer sovereignty, are motivated and sustained by competing capitalist interests, making the “digital city” a neoliberal phenomenon. As David Harvey insists, neoliberalism, as a “hegemonic mode of discourse,” has become assimilated into the ways we “interpret, live in, and understand the world.” 14 Neoliberalism has become naturalized—so deeply embedded in our everyday lives and practices and part of “commonsense understandings,” that we tend to take its fundamental concepts for granted. 15 “Innovation,” Harvey also reminds us, “exacerbates instability, insecurity, and in the end, becomes the prime force pushing capitalism into periodic paroxysms of crisis,” 16 a theory that I consider when examining such digital technological initiatives and programs such as Seattle’s crime maps, San Antonio’s consistent reference to the vulnerability of cyberspace to terrorist attacks, or NYC’s mobile 311 apps.
But whereas Harvey argues that in the continual process of creative destruction, old models of production and labor are being frequently replaced by new ones, and capitalism responds to crises by simply moving its operations around geographically, I argue that in contemporary digital and smart city economies, new virtual geographies of production and labor are being created that are perhaps even more insidious and imperceptible. The large amounts of data produced and collected in all three cities and the ways in which data are aggregated and used—whether by city officials or partner corporations—is almost impossible to fully quantify, and yet, as we can discern in many instanc...