Transportation and Smart City Imaginaries: A Critical Analysis of Proposals for the USDOT Smart City Challenge

Authors

  • Oscar H. Gandy, Jr. Annenberg/ University of Pennsylvania
  • Selena Nemorin University College London

Keywords:

smart city, transportation planning, public–private partnerships, surveillance, privacy, inequality, sociotechnical paradigm, social media

Abstract

Scholarly attention to the development of “smart cities” around the globe has been focused on the nature of these cities, and visions of the futures that these developments would provide for individuals, communities, and institutions. Much of the research about these information-intensive projects has been focused on the description of these cities in terms of their primary socioeconomic goals and on the influential roles in their development being played by globally active information technology firms. An important, but underexplored, focus of this research has been an examination of how local and regional governments have envisioned these projects. This article responds to that challenge through a critical analysis of proposals submitted to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Smart City Challenge. We associate the choice of population references used in these proposals with the socioeconomic characteristics of these cities and then examine the nature of changes made in the proposals by the seven finalists.

Author Biographies

Oscar H. Gandy, Jr., Annenberg/ University of Pennsylvania

Professor Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania. http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/ogandy/ Oscar H. Gandy Jr. , retired since 2006, was the Herbert Schiller Professor of Communication studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. Gandy is a world-renowned scholar of the political economy of information.

Selena Nemorin, University College London

Selena Nemorin is a lecturer in Sociology of Digital Technology with the Department of Culture, Communication and Media, University College London. Her research and publications explore the dynamic between society and technology. More specifically, she is interested in how socio-technical artefacts construct and categorise individuals and groups as objects for governance.

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Published

2020-02-14

Issue

Vol. 14 (2020)

Section

Articles

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