Cafe Economique – ‘What is a Smart City?’

“What is a Smart City?” – Prof Gary Dymski, Professor and Chair of Applied Economics, University of Leeds

Synopsis

This talk takes a deep dive into the question of ‘what is a smart city?’ The phrase “smart city” usually conveys images of driverless cars streaking through space, robotic restaurants serving homogenized food, and so on – a science-fiction scenario. Actually, this sort of imagining of what cities can be is not new, it’s old. And actually, what we have to do, to think of a ‘smart city’, is to begin by considering what are the elements of the actual lived city.

Urban sociologists in the 1930s gave us the idea of a concentric city, in which a Darwinian sorting process occurred, with the working class in one place, the upper class in another, as if this was the way of nature. Then the urban economist Tom Schelling gave us the idea that cities are segregated – by race, or along other lines – because this is what people choose – at least, it’s what some people choose.

Suppose we reject these ideas, that people should be separate by Darwinian processes or by the power of the richer to isolate themselves from those they don’t want to be around. How do we create the more equitable, inclusive city? Isn’t that the key to sustainability? These are our points of departure.