Techno-Optimistic Smart City Imaginaries: A Patchwork of Four Urban Futures

Laura Forlano

There are four common techno-optimistic imaginaries framing “smart city” initiatives:
city as platform, city as (new) urban manufacturer, city as testbed and city as lab. Each
can be directly tied to specific technologies, social and economic claims and geographies.
Rather than oppositional, both top-down and bottom-up engagements with these four
common imaginaries of the smart city are co-constructed through a patchwork of
assumptions, claims and practices. Both of these techno-optimistic modes, can be
understood as technologically deterministic and disconnected from social needs.
However, on the other hand, they might be also understood as generative and
experimental ways of "searching" for an appropriate fit between technology and
humanity. While top-down models are often framed as technologies in search of a
solution or "if we build it they will come," bottom up models are more likely to engage
human-centered design, participatory design, speculative design, or civic hackathons.
These four imaginaries for what the city is and what it might become illustrate the ways
in which imaginaries construct futures of possibility while, at the same time, displacing
responsibility and selling a deeply unequal and unjust present reality.

Introduction

This article engages with four techno-optimistic imaginaries that are currently framing
the “smart city”. Specifically, based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted over the past
10 years on a variety of topics including broadband infrastructure, digital fabrication,
autonomous vehicles and the internet of things, the article describes these four
characterizations as: city as platform, city as (new) urban manufacturer, city as testbed
and city as lab. Taken together, these imaginaries of urban futures are creeping into
everyday life, neighborhoods and communities. And, through the participation of the
media and citizens, in addition to government and business that are primarily framing
these issues, we all play a role in the construction of these imaginaries and realities to
draw on Haraway’s material-semiotics (Haraway, 1991).

City as Platform

In early 2016, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio agreed to shut down the internet
browsers on the city’s new LinkNYC kiosks after only 7 months due to complaints over
people loitering around them for hours, listening to loud music, watching movies,
viewing pornography and surrounding them with furniture, (McGeehan, 2016). The
kiosks, intended to replace over 7,500 pay phones, are run by a consortium of companies
called CityBridge, provide free Wi-Fi, phone calls, real-time maps, access to 311 city
services and 911 services in exchange for targeted location-based advertising revenue.

According to Alphabet’s (a.k.a. Google) Sidewalk Labs, the owner of Intersection (one of
the three major companies in the CityBridge consortium), the LinkNYC kiosks are “a
commercial solution to bridge the digital divide” as part of their “integrated platform for
urban innovation spanning technology, data, policy best practices, relationships, and

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capital.”1 The service will be free to the city and, in addition, will generate at least $500
million in revenue for the government over the 12-year contract.

In the “city as platform,” citizens are one of four “asset classes” including data,
infrastructure and technology. The city as platform is exemplified by New York’s
LinkNYC terminals, which provide free access to the Internet for citizens while selling
location-based advertising. As a platform, the city is able to outsource the provision of
what might have traditionally been understood as a municipal or government service in
exchange for a payment from a private sector consortium.

In 2016, New York realized a long-term dream with the creation of a free, public wireless
network. Since the introduction of wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) in parks and public spaces in
the early 2000s, local organizations, business development districts and municipal
governments have been eager to see cities blanketed with free broadband as a service to
both residents and visitors. However, since the network was first piloted, it has faced
criticism from privacy advocates and others around the terms of its data collection. 2

The network, LinkNYC, is run by a consortium of companies called CityBridge, which

won 12-year franchise3 on December 10, 2014 in a competitive request for proposals
(RFP) issued by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration earlier that year. 4 Specifically, the
RFP sought to replace the city’s payphone infrastructure with 7,500 kiosks that provide
free access to the Internet and phone calls in exchange for advertising.

LinkNYC is a good example of the “city as platform” model in which, according to a

recent report by the Aspen Institute, people are one of four “asset classes,” which include
data, infrastructure, and technologies, (Bollier, 2016). In essence, in order to make this
model financially viable, the city of New York (and other cities that have adopted similar
infrastructures) is selling the eyeballs of their citizens in exchange for free city services
provided by a consortium of private companies. At the focus of this exchange is location-
based advertising delivered to citizens that opt-in to using the LinkNYC network with
their laptops, tablets and mobile phones. According to section 3.12 on Data Rights in the
original franchise documents, the agreement specifies that CityBridge (the franchisee)
“retains ownerships rights in all data created in the course of providing the Wi-Fi
Services to the extent that such data doesn’t include Personally Identifiable
Information...The Franchisee retains no ownership rights in Personally Identifiable
Information.” Similarly, the agreement states that CityBridge “shall grant the City a
perpetual, unhindered, irrevocable right to use any anonymized aggregated data created
in the provision of the Wi-Fi Services...The City will not have any rights to use
Personally Identifiable Information.”

1
See http://www.sidewalklabs.com. Accessed on October 5, 2016.
2
Pinto, Nick. "Google Is Transforming Nyc's Payphones into a 'Personalized Propaganda
Engine'." Village Voice, July 6, 2016.
3
See https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doitt/business/linknyc-franchises.page for LinkNYC
franchise documents. Accessed on March 26, 2018.
4
See https://www.link.nyc/presskit.html. Accessed on March 26, 2018.

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According to LinkNYC, CityBridge uses “anonymized data” to “improve Services and
inform advertising that appears on Link kiosks.”5 In addition, they state that they do not “add
or insert any advertising onto your personal device.” Their privacy policy states that: “with
your express opt-in consent, we may use your information, including Personally
Identifiable Information, to: Provide you with information about goods or services that
may interest you; and, Permit selected third parties to provide you with information about
goods or services that may interest you.”6

According to an article by Nick Pinto in the Village Voice, Dan Doctoroff, the founder
and CEO of Sidewalk Labs, gave a talk at the Yale Club in which he explained
LinkNYC’s business model, saying: “By having access to the browsing activity of people
using the Wi-Fi — all anonymized and aggregated — we can actually then target ads to
people in proximity and then obviously over time track them through lots of different things,
like beacons and location services, as well as their browsing activity. So in effect what we’re
doing is replicating the digital experience in physical space,” (Pinto, 2016).

Another example of the city as platform might be the use of technologies such as red light
cameras, smart parking meters and dynamic traffic management. For example, in late
July, the City of Chicago agreed to settle a $38.75 class-action lawsuit related to its red
light camera program. Under the settlement, the city will repay drivers that were unfairly
ticketed a portion of the cost of their ticket. Over the past five years, the program,
ostensibly implemented to make Chicago’s intersections safer, has been mired in
corruption, bribery, mismanagement, malfunction and moral wrongdoing. This
confluence of factors has resulted in a great deal of negative press about the project over
the past five years. But, this example should not be understood as an exception. Rather, it
is business as usual at the intersection of technology and politics.

According to a study commissioned by the Chicago Tribune in 2014, the traffic cameras
have little effect on safety and, in some cases, have even increased the number of rear-
end collisions by 22%. The rear-end crashes are caused by the fact that people are afraid
to drive through the intersections. (When riding home from work in a taxi last year, the
driver found an alternate route to my building rather than driving through an intersection
with a red light camera.) One city official has made the claim that rather than safety, the
red light camera program has always been about revenue generation for the city (as a
substitute for taxes).

The controversies surrounding red light cameras in Chicago make visible the ways in
which design and engineering criteria such as safety and efficiency, seamlessness and
stickyness, and convenience and security are themselves ways of defining the ethics,
values and politics of our cities and citizens. Like wolves in sheep clothing, these
specifications seem difficult to argue with, at first glance. But, a detailed investigation
illustrates the ways in which they are, in fact, embedded in the political economy and,
more specifically, in neo-liberal capitalism.

5
See https://www.link.nyc/faq.html#advertising. Accessed on March 26, 2018.
6
See https://www.link.nyc/privacy-policy.html. Accessed on March 26, 2018.

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On their website, Redflex, the company that produced the red light cameras also sells
systems for ticketless parking, CCTV and intelligent traffic management and claims that
they “make our cities and our lives more green, safer and smarter.” 7 Furthermore, the
company argues that their technology can “reliably and consistently address negative
driving behaviors and effectively enforce traffic laws on roadways and intersections with
a history of crashes and incidents.”8 In the case of Chicago, nothing could be further from
the truth. Instead, the cameras were unnecessarily installed in some intersections without
a history of problems, they malfunctioned and they issued illegal tickets due to short
yellow-lights (which were not within federal limits) and tickets issued after enforcement
hours. And, due to structural inequalities, these difficulties were more likely to negatively
impact poorer and less advantaged city residents.

City as New (Urban) Manufacturer

On April 24, 2017, I attended a symposium, “Future of Manufacturing in NYC—the

Garment Center and Beyond” at the High School of Fashion Industries that was hosted by
Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer’s office.9 According to the Manhattan
Borough President website, the event—with panels on urban manufacturing, the garment
ecosystem and zoning--attracted a combination of “Local residents and industry
stakeholders—labor, business owners, and building owners.” Brewer’s dedication to
defending the Garment Center, the current nexus of a wide variety of work in the fashion
industry, as a hub is clear. On her site, she writes that it is “a way of keeping skilled jobs
in our borough and our city.” As she introduces the panel, Brewer emphasizes the need
for spaces for entrepreneurs and small business in light of the City’s plans to relocate the
manufacturing components of the Garment Center to Sunset Park, Brooklyn. While the
“days of big factories are gone,” she says, it is important to create a plan for the Garment
Center that “considers all views” in order to “keep manufacturing in our city” and, in
particular, to support “new manufacturers or makers” beyond those traditionally
considered as entrepreneurs.

In the first panel, “What urban manufacturers are making today, and how zoning can help
or hurt them,” moderated by Pratt Institute’s Adam Friedman of the Pratt Center for
Community Development, panelists discussed the “rebirth of urban manufacturing,”
emphasizing the design-oriented nature of this new era of manufacturing. Here, it is
argued, design, craft and culture define both the necessary skills as well as the brand
value for products from New York. One panelist emphasized that proximity to markets is
important in that production processes can be geographically close to the businesses that
sell their items. Another panelist underscored the need for equitable economic
development and an equitable economy. Another, from the jewelry industry, stressed the
integration of technology with “old school craftsmanship.” New technologies, it is
claimed--computer aided design (CAD), 3-D printing devices such as MakerBot, spaces

7
See http://www.redflex.com/en-us. Accessed on September 10, 2017.
8
See http://www.redflex.com/en-us/what-we-do/traffic-safety. Accessed on September
10, 2017.
9
See http://manhattanbp.nyc.gov/html/home/home_archive24.shtml. Accessed on July
25, 2018.

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such as TechShop as well as platforms such as Kickstarter--are reducing barriers.
Another, a chocolate maker, described the process of “navigating the urban environment”
while also “creating premium products,” and “manufacturing within the cityscape.” This
new era of “micro-manufacturing” is based on small, sometimes single person
manufacturing shops. According to Friedman, this movement is about “fitting ourselves
back into cities.”

Compared to other regions in the country, the Garment Center’s unique aggregation of
businesses, processes, people, activities and materials is essential for students and
business owners as well as professional designers and costume makers during many
stages of the design process. For example, panelists mention the need to access tags,
labels, zippers and buttons to make samples as well as for production.

While many companies have left the Garment District, others would like to stay in order
to access talented workers, stay connected to the designers, maintain proximity to
vendors, and maintain community. Yet, they are finding it more and more unaffordable.
In particular, one panelist in the jewelry business stressed the difficulty of finding
specialized workers—some with 10-15 years of training--with craft skills in jewelry
making. Language barriers and the lack of access to technology further exacerbates this
problem. For him, relocating to Sunset Park, Brooklyn would make it even more difficult
to find and hire these workers. And, the workers who, for the most part, take the train to
work, would face up to two-hour commutes (versus 40 minutes). Furthermore, according
to one panelist, garment workers in Brooklyn make half that of those in Manhattan,
suggesting lower levels of skill and specialization.

Abutting the Garment District on the West side is one of New York’s new development
projects, Hudson Yards. The project is described as “the largest private real estate
development in the history of the United States and the largest development in New York
City since Rockefeller Center.”10 Hudson Yards includes 18 million square feet of
commercial and residential space, 100 stores, 4000 apartments, an art center, public
spaces and parks, a public school and a hotel. With Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs as a key
tenant, the site is also considered to be “the world’s most ambitious ‘smart city’ project”
(Mattern, 2016).

The second panel, “The New York City garment ecosystem, how it works, and how to
protect and strengthen it,” was moderated by the Design Trust for Public Space’s Susan
Chin. The Design Trust issued a comprehensive report, “Making Midtown,” about the
Garment District in 2012 ("Making Midtown: A New Vision for a 21st Century Garment
District in New York City," 2012). In particular, according to Chin, the report found that
the Garment Center is the “center of a very complex and vulnerable ecosystem” that
represents $98 billion in economic activity and 180K jobs. In existence since the 1930’s
the Garment Center has become a fashion capital of the world with a “creative cluster” of
designers, makers and showrooms alongside apparel manufacturers. Chin stated the value
of the Garment Center in three words, “Location, location, location.”

10
See https://www.hudsonyardsnewyork.com. Accessed on July 25, 2018.

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Thirty years ago, in 1987, New York City enacted zoning for the “Garment Center
Special District” in order to protect factories and manufacturing jobs. The zoning was
intended to discourage building owners from renting to commercial tenants ("Making
Midtown: A New Vision for a 21st Century Garment District in New York City," 2012).
However, critics claim that the city has not been enforcing these zoning regulations and,
that, as the number of manufacturers decline, landlords are raising rents and/or not
offering manufacturers long-term leases. While New York’s Economic Development
Corporation has been working with landlords for several years to create the new plan to
move manufacturing to Sunset Park, manufacturers and workers in the Garment Center
were not part of the conversation.

“We want enforcement!” some members of the audience angrily yelled out during the
discussion. Currently, the city is contemplating removing the zoning regulations all
together as they consolidate activities in new developments such as Industry City in
Sunset Park, Brooklyn. According to one panelist, “Some makers will not be able to
make it [emphasis mine] in mid-town Manhattan.”

Edgar Romney of Workers United and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union
offers a history of the Garment Center noting that it is “an industry of people of color,”
workers come from all five boroughs and New Jersey and “if we move this industry en
masse there is a good chance that we will lose this workforce as well.” In particular,
while the city seeks to extract the economic value from mid-town and move it to Sunset
Park, it is important to consider the lived experiences of workers that will need to
commute longer hours or move to new neighborhoods in order to keep their jobs.

The Garment Center is the focus of intense daily activity, especially during specific times
of the year such as Fashion Week. Students and professionals rely on the districts central
location, sometimes visiting businesses four to five times a day in order to procure
different materials such as special types of buttons as well as take advantage of
specializations such as embroidery and pleating. These are the efficiencies that are the
product of co-location. Some businesses fear that they would not survive if they relocated
to another neighborhood since they are used to handling many time-sensitive projects and
last minute requests. One panelist, a business owner that currently has only a month-to-
month lease says, “if I left the Garment Center, I would be out of business...patterns get
passed around in the same day...emergencies and fires that have to be put out in the same
day, whether it be fashion week or completions for huge orders.” Costume-makers also
rely on the Garment Center due to its proximity to Broadway and the theater district as
well as to film and television studios. Another panelist, a fashion designer, argues for the
importance of the cluster for the training of young designers saying, “None of my
students could do any of their projects if they couldn’t run up to the garment industry,
...you can only be the fashion capital of the world if you keep growing young designers.”
The Garment Center is about more than manufacturing, she says, it is about finding
materials such as paper and getting your scissors sharpened.

One panelist says that the specializations at the Garment Center include both human and
machine capacities and that the district requires “no fewer than 300 companies in order to

6
maintain specialization” including manufacturers that specialize in materials, supplies,
pockets, canvas, button hole, thread matching, pleating, embroidery, beading, tailoring,
handwork and double-faced fabrics. Overall, he believes that there is more investment in
machinery than there is in training workers.

One year later, in June 2018, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer’s office
provided an update on “a new proposal to support fashion production in the Garment
Center,” brokered with Mayor Bill de Blasio and Council Speaker Corey Johnson.

Following the recommendations from the Garment Center Steering Committee, which
was convened and chaired by Brewer, the plan includes the following:

“A new tax incentive program to preserve manufacturing space,” “A new

commitment by the city to provide substantial resources to acquire a building
dedicated to garment production through a public-private partnership,” “A
special permit requirement to curb hotel development in the district,” and “The
current preservation requirement for manufacturing in the Garment Center
would be lifted through an amendment to the city’s zoning resolution.”

The plan is currently moving through the public review process.

City as Testbed

One way in which the future imaginaries of autonomous vehicles are made visible in the
present is through urban testbeds as well as simulated, experimental testbeds. In April
2015, The Driverless City team visited and drove through The University of Michigan’s
Mobility Transformation Center’s Mcity, which is a simulated “real world” city. Mcity is
real, but not real. A lab but at the same time, in the wild. Simulated but not entirely a
simulation.

Here is a brief excerpt from our field notes documenting the trip:

Head North on Route 75 toward Flint, said the scratched green

sign. We stopped carefully at the flashing red light in our rented,
black Chevy Tahoe SUV and then proceed on the ramp towards Gd
River Ave. on Route 5 and through a tunnel. We turned slowly to
the left (taking note of the 25 mile an hour speed limit), passed a
canopy of trees and went over a short narrow bridge. Now, just
past the traffic signals at the railroad crossing in the intersection,
we could see the colorful facades of familiar stores from a small
town in the Midwest emerging in the distance. The adjacent
sidewalk was dotted with garbage cans, mailboxes, benches,
streetlights, fire hydrants and parking meters. A painted bike lane
curved along the right side of the street along the curb. We turned
right onto Wolverine Ave., down State St. and headed toward
Pontiac Tr. Somehow, we were right back where we started. We
could have driven around and around all day on an infinite loop
but never arrived anywhere at all. And, certainly, not any closer to

7
 the future of the city. (Field Notes, Ann Arbor, MI, April 1, 2016)

The test facility, which was opened in July 2015, is a 32-acre site with 5 miles of track
that is oriented North-South in order to test geographic positioning systems (GPS). The
site is used by university and industry researchers to test the wireless communication
systems that are necessary for autonomous vehicles to communicate with the
transportation infrastructure in complex “real world” scenarios. On the one hand,
Mcity—the only facility of its type in the world--is a safe, secure, controlled, and
repeatable environment and, on the other hand, it is in the “real-world”. The traffic signs
have been donated and deliberately scratched in order to test the accuracy of image-
processing systems. The tree canopy is actually a metal frame structure covered with a
piece of black fabric in order to simulate the interference that trees can cause in the
transmission of wireless signals. It is even possible to simulate humidity in the natural
environment and its impact on the communication systems. The building facades and
other aspects of the test facility are all made with real materials such as glass, brick,
wood, aluminum and vinyl. A digitally printed stylized image of Zingerman’s deli from
Ann Arbor is integrated into the facade, which depicts a densely populated business
district with multiple local shops side-by-side. The building facades (only the facades
have been simulated) give the strip the feeling of a Western frontier town. While the road
itself is designed to scale, many of the components—such as the bridges, tunnels and
intersections—are smaller and shorter.

Qualitative research on the lived, everyday experience of using digital technologies in

urban contexts (Forlano, 2013, 2015) illustrates the real world is full of sticky-ness,
glitches, cracks, frictions, failures and breakdowns (Chalmers, MacColl, & Bell, 2003;
Forlano & Mathew, 2014; Law, 2004; Nakamura, 2013; Rosner & Ames, 2014; Star,
1999). According to Jim Sayer, Deployment Director at the University of Michigan’s
Mobility Transformation Center, this combination of “real” and “simulated” that we
observed on our site visit is necessary. “We are not going to rebuild all of our
infrastructure in order to accommodate automated or autonomous vehicles. Vehicles are
going to need to learn to operate in the legacy system that we have,” he said in a video
featured on the Mcity website. 11 And, this “real world” testing presents a significant
economic opportunity for cities and states. For example, following the early success of
the Mcity testbed, the State of Michigan is currently planning a new site that is 335-acres
or ten times its size. 12 This example reinforces Halpern et al.’s notion of urban
replicability, stating that:

The city is envisioned as a physical incarnation of an

immense cloud of big data; its purpose and value are
generated by speculation on how sensitive its infrastructure
of sensors and cellular communication towers is, on how
much data the city can generate, and on how capable its
high-bandwidth conduits are to circulate these data…These
cities, like computational algorithms, are clearly defined

11
See http://www.mtc.umich.edu/test-facility. Accessed on August 19, 2016.
12
See http://www.annarborusa.org/americancenterformobility. Accessed on August 20, 2016.

8
 and replicable: they are the protocols of a global
infrastructure of information and economy,” (2013, p. 274).

The new site is at a former factory build by Henry Ford that was used to make B-24
bombers during World War II, which illustrates the ways in which the infrastructures of
the industrial economy are being repurposed to support the postindustrial economy.

City as Lab

A drone flies to the stage to deliver an award at the 4th Industrial Revolution Awards in
Chicago. Several hundred people--mostly men with gray hair and gray suits--are seated
in the large banquet hall around circular tables. The scene resembles a wedding but, in
this case, rather than a happy couple, the future of manufacturing in the city where “a
tiding tide lifts all ships” is being celebrated along with a dozen initiatives including a
robotics project on the South Side as well as a number of small and large companies.
Governor Bruce Rauner, a former venture capitalist, makes a brief appearance,
proclaiming “Entrepreneurship is what the American economy is all about,” and being
an entrepreneur is what it means to be American.

-Field Notes, October 18, 2017

The city as a lab builds on the city as a (new) urban manufacturer and is closely tied to
the claims of The Fourth Industrial Revolution, which promises to integrate physical,
digital and biological capabilities for the purpose of economic growth. In the city as a lab,
“big data” can be collected and analyzed in order to better understand and monitor (and
capture the value of) urban processes.

At the Fourth Industrial Revolution Awards in October 2017, which attracted leaders
from many of Chicago’s technology organizations such as UI Labs, Mhub and 1871,
participants learned of the benefits of “growing your own workforce,” shifting from
“mass production to mass customization” and using artifical intelligence and robotics for
manufacturing. Later that Fall, in November 2017, UI Labs had an event “Digital
Disruption: The Factory Floor Transformation” in which a variety of technology
companies showcased their products for improving manufacturing.

According to July 2018 press release issued by Illinois Institute of Technology about a
Japanese machine tool manufacturer relocating to Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is
quoted as saying “Manufacturing is written in Chicago’s DNA and today the sector is
running on all cylinders...we are creating jobs today while ensuring the future of
manufacturing in Chicago is even stronger than its past.” Here, the reference to DNA,
and, in particular, the idea that manufacturing is somehow embedded naturally and
biologically into the city’s past and future (a future driven by digital manufacturing,
digital fabrication and biotech) is of interest.

On April 1, 2016 Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced a $317 million federally
funded initiative in textile innovation and manufacturing—a national consortium of

9
public and private organizations to be led by MIT. It’s only the most recent project of the
Obama administration’s National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, a major effort
to re-invigorate the American economy. This ambitious initiative to build manufacturing
infrastructure nationwide plans an initial network of 45 Manufacturing Innovation
Institutes over 10 years. Led by non-profit organizations, the institutes partner
universities, businesses and government agencies with the aim of bridging the gap
between basic and applied research in key manufacturing areas such as additive
manufacturing (eg, 3D printing), digital manufacturing, lightweight metals,
semiconductors, advanced composites, flexible hybrid electronics and integrated
photonics.

The unique structure of these public-private partnerships, the technologies and data that
are being developed, as well as the source funding (primarily from the departments of
defense, energy, and commerce) raise pressing questions for scholars and practitioners
alike. How might we develop ethnographic and design research methods that are well
suited to grappling with these emerging technologies? How might we document and
shape the conversation around the nation’s civic innovation infrastructure? How do we
conduct ethnographies of future infrastructures?

Chicago hosts the federally funded UI Labs, comprised of the Digital Manufacturing and
Design Innovation Institute, City Digital and the Illinois Manufacturing Lab. UI Labs is a
cross-institutional network of over 200 partners from industry, government (Department
of Defense) and universities, focused on the intersection of computing, big data and the
Internet of Things. Its headquarters is a 94,000-foot former window factory warehouse on
Goose Island, an artificial island in the North branch of the Chicago River.

On a visit to Goose Island on one of the warmer days in February 2015, the island felt
like a liminal space—between Chicago’s industrial past and its promised future as well as
between two distinct geographies of the city, the Old Town and Noble Square
neighborhoods. The island is home to a mix of high-end car dealerships, corporate R&D
facilities, film industry warehouses, a beer company, lighting and equipment companies,
printing facilities and back-end tech support for large corporations such as Wrigley and
Mars, a ComEd energy plant as well as residential properties. As these geographies of the
city are appropriated for the “smart city” agenda, they are also rebranded as Goose Island
2.0, the “innovation island.”

City Digital, the lab that focuses on smart cities, is charged with addressing “physical-
digital convergence” through “data-driven urban innovation within the built
environment” in areas such as energy, infrastructure, transportation, water and sanitation.
For example, City Digital plans to conduct pilot projects to demonstrate the value of
technology for improving urban infrastructure using the city of Chicago as a test-bed.
This approach, which is advocated in the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and
Technology report on “Technology and the Future of Cities,” has been challenged by
researchers at Georgia Tech, who express concern over the potential for continued
uneven development and socio-spatial fragmentation as well as criticize the report’s
“technoscientific orientation” and failure to include perspectives of experts in the social

10
sciences and/or urban science disciplines.

In fact, future infrastructures are the subject of significant work across diverse fields. For
example, in Program Earth, Jennifer Gabrys presents

“environmental sensing as a technological practice that spans environmental studies,

digital culture and computation, the arts, and science and technology studies...
Environmental sensing technologies open up new ways of approaching digital
technology as material, processual and more-than-human arrangements of experience
and participation.”(2016, p. 21)

The “urban sensing” project Array of Things is “a network of interactive, modular sensor
boxes that will be installed around Chicago to collect real-time data on the city’s
environment, infrastructure, and activity.” Described as a “fitness tracker” for the city,
the project is led by Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Chicago and the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago and funded by a $3.1 million dollar grant from the
National Science Foundation. Unlike City Digital, which aims to commercialize
technologies that they are testing, the Array of Things data will be open and free to
researchers and the public.

A City from the Internet Up

What does this patchwork of techno-optimistic imaginaries of the city mean for the future
of cities? While these categories are multiple, overlapping and not mutually exclusive,
their combination results in an even more pervasive vision for urban futures. Namely, a
city in which all aspects of the infrastructure will be optimized, tested, surveilled and
tracked for the purpose of generating economic value. This “neighborhood built from the
internet up” (Badger, 2017) as it is being called by Sidewalk Labs is currently being
developed in cities around the world. Sidewalk’s own project is in Toronto where the
company is planning to incorporate smart energy grids, sensors, noise and pollution
monitors, adaptive traffic lights as well as a host of autonomous and self-driving
transportation and delivery vehicles (Badger, 2017). Similarly, Bill Gates recently
purchased 24,800 acres of land in Arizona where a technologically advanced city called
Belmont is being developed (Diaz, 2017). Facebook has been developing a property
called Willow Village near their headquarters in Menlo Park (Streitfeld, 2018).
According to The New York Times, “Facebook is testing the proposition: Do people love
tech companies so much they will live inside of them? When the project was announced
last summer, critics dubbed it Facebookville or, in tribute to company co-founder Mark
Zuckerberg, Zucktown.” General Electric is working with LStar Ventures, the developer
of planned communities, to build Union Point, which is located 12 miles south of Boston
(Prevost, 2018). And, with Amazon soon to announce their new headquarters, a new city
will be the testbed for the latest in transportation, logistics and delivery (Wingfield &
Cohen, 2017).

Conclusion
This article has described four urban futures that are being imagined through and
juxtaposed with techno-optimistic visions of the smart city. The City as Platform—

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defined by the integration of digital technologies such as WiFi terminals--is a streamlined
version of city government in which many services are provided by third party companies
rather than by the government itself. The City as a (New) Urban Manufacturer—defined
by the integration of development of new businesses around design, digital fabrication
and local manufacturing—is a rebirth of manufacturing for the purpose of economic
growth. The City as Testbed—defined by the use of public roadways and simulations that
are used for the testing of autonomous vehicles—is an experimental space for future
technologies. And, lastly, the City as a Lab—defined by the measurement, control,
tracking and surveillance of a wide range of urban processes—is a highly scientific and
systematic management of urban life.

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