‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.

The Production of Space

It seems that a new paradigm is being formed within the social sciences, the ‘new mobilities’ paradigm. Some recent contributions to forming and stabilising this new paradigm include work from anthropology, cultural studies, geography, migration studies, science and technology studies, tourism and transport studies, and sociology. In this paper we draw out some characteristics, properties, and implications of this emergent paradigm, especially documenting some novel mobile theories and methods. We reflect on how far this paradigm has developed and thereby to extend and develop the ‘mobility turn’ within the social sciences.

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The new mobilities paradigm.

Debates about the future of urban development in many Western countries have been increasingly influenced by discussions of smart cities. Yet despite numerous examples of this ‘urban labelling’ phenomenon, we know surprisingly little about so‐called smart cities, particularly in terms of what the label ideologically reveals as well as hides. Due to its lack of definitional precision, not to mention an underlying self‐congratulatory tendency, the main thrust of this article is to provide a preliminary critical polemic against some of the more rhetorical aspects of smart cities. The primary focus is on the labelling process adopted by some designated smart cities, with a view to problematizing a range of elements that supposedly characterize this new urban form, as well as question some of the underlying assumptions/contradictions hidden within the concept. To aid this critique, the article explores to what extent labelled smart cities can be understood as a high‐tech variation of the ‘entrepreneurial city’...

Will the Real Smart City Please Stand Up?: Intelligent, progressive or entrepreneurial?

Urban performance currently depends not only on a city's endowment of hard infrastructure (physical capital), but also, and increasingly so, on the availability and quality of knowledge communication and social infrastructure (human and social capital). The latter form of capital is decisive for urban competitiveness. Against this background, the concept of the “smart city” has recently been introduced as a strategic device to encompass modern urban production factors in a common framework and, in particular, to highlight the importance of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the last 20 years for enhancing the competitive profile of a city. The present paper aims to shed light on the often elusive definition of the concept of the “smart city.” We provide a focused and operational definition of this construct and present consistent evidence on the geography of smart cities in the EU27. Our statistical and graphical analyses exploit in depth, for the first time to our knowledge, the most re...

Smart Cities in Europe

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Smart cities in Europe

This article contends that critical urban research is characterized by horizontalism. It argues that the swathe of recent urban writings have neglected the vertical qualities of contemporary urbanization. The article’s introductory section elaborates this argument in detail. The paper then elucidates three areas where vertically oriented research is emerging. These encompass: the links between Google Earth and urbanism; the connections between social secession and ascension through buildings, walkways and personalized air travel; and the links between verticalized surveillance and urban burrowing.

Getting off the ground: On the politics of urban verticality

This article argues that standardized, public or private infrastructure monopolies are receding as hegemonic forms of urban infrastructure development We are starting to witness the uneven overlaying of new, customized, high-performance urban infrastructures onto the apparently immanent, universal and (usually) public monopoly networks laid down in developed cities between the 1930s and 1960s This article seeks to develop a broad and international exploration of the construction of such premium networked spaces and to begin analysing how they are bound up within wider processes of urban change and restructuring To this end it highlights four processes of socio-technical and political economic change that are supporting the emergence of premium networked infrastructures These are: the ‘unbundling’ of urban infrastructure provision; the erosion of comprehensive urban planning and the construction of new consumption spaces; the emergence of infrastructural consumerism; and the widespread shift towards extended and automobilized cityscapes In each case, the article explores emerging examples of premium networked spaces via brief case studies Finally, the article reflects on the likely limits to these trends, by way of a brief conclusion

Cet article sugg ere que les monopoles d’infrastructures uniformis´s, prives ou publics, disparaissent en tant que formes h´gemoniques du developpement d’infrastructure urbaine Nous commen??ons a voir la superposition inegale de nouvelles infrastructures urbaines de haut rendement, faites sur mesure, sur les r´seaux de monopole (generalement) publics universels, apparemment immanents, mis en place dans les villes developp´es entre les annees trente et les ann´es soixante Cet article tente de developper une perspective internationale de la construction de ces espaces de reseaux recherches, et de commencer a analyser comment ils sont relies dans le contexte du processus de changement et de restructuration urbains plus larges Pour ce faire, il souligne quatre processus de changement politico-economique et socio-technique qui supportent l’apparition des infrastructures de reseaux recherch´es Ce sont: le ‘d´sempaquetage’ de la provision d’infrastructure urbaine; l’erosion de la planification urbaine comprehensive et la construction de nouveaux espaces de consommation; l’apparition du consomm´risme infrastructurel; et un changement general vers des paysages de citeetendus et motorises Dans chaque cas, l’article explore des exemples emergents d’espaces de reseaux recherches avec de brefs cas d’etude Enfin, dans sa conclusion, l’article reflechit aux limites probables de ces tendances

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Constructing premium network spaces: reflections on infrastructure networks and contemporary urban development

Managing Cities: The New Urban Context

Cities, War, and Terrorism

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Stephen Graham

Papers

Getting off the ground: On the politics of urban verticality

Constructing premium network spaces: reflections on infrastructure networks and contemporary urban development

Managing Cities: The New Urban Context

Cities, War, and Terrorism

Global Grids of Glass: On Global Cities, Telecommunications and Planetary Urban Networks