Smart Cities: ’Provincializing’ the global urban age in India and South Africa

Principal Investigator (PI): Prof. O. Söderström, Institut de Géographie, Université de Neuchâtel

Co-PI:Prof.AyonaDatta, Department of Geography, King’s College, London.

Collaborations:

  • Prof. Nancy Odendaal, School of Architecture, University of Cape Town.
  • Prof. Diganta Das, National Institute of Education, Nanyang TechnologicalUniversity, Singapore.

Partners:

  • Prof.Gillian Rose, Department of Geography, Open University; from October 2017: Department of Geography, University of Oxford.
  • Prof. Federico Caprotti, Department of Geography, University of Exeter.

Duration: 3 years, budget: 624’000 CHF, funding body: Swiss National Science Foundation.

Lay summary

The question this research project asks is: how are smart city visions reshaping cities in India and South Africa? Since 2000, smart city visions - where data, software and IT infrastructures are seen as key in the success of urban management and development - has gained traction in many regions across the world. However, little is known about how these visions affect the agendas and initiatives of municipalities as well as the resistances and counter-initiatives of urban social movements. It is this research gap that this comparative study, led by scholars based in Switzerland, the UK, South Africa and Singapore, will address.

Through a comparative study of smart cities in India and South Africa, this research will analyse how the globally circulating smart city model makes its way into urban development strategies and the initiatives of urban social movements in these two countries. It will look at:
1) How visions of urban development in India and South Africa are being shaped by the model of the smart city;
2) How these visions gain social and political credence, restructure local and national policy initiatives and unfold over time in existing cities;
3) If and to what extent local smart city initiatives are related to historical entecedents (path dependencies) in those cities;
4) If and how these visions are contested and redefined at the scale of local citizens and civil society.
It is organised in two phases. The first phase will involve a systematic survey of retrofitted smart cities in India and South Africa aiming to produce a comparative analysis of the emergence and development of smart city initiatives in those two contexts. In the second phase, the project will focus on three cities in each country with differing smart city strategies and public debates. The aim will be a comparative study of urban development strategies and grassroots movements contesting or reformulating visions of the smart city. The first phase will involve mixed-methods of web-based research, mapping, visual and textual document analysis; while the second phase will involve detailed documentary search, semi-structured interviews, ethnography and observations, in addition to the previous methods. The results will contribute to knowledge on urban development and policymaking around smart cities and on the opportunities and risks of smart urbanism in cities of the Global South.

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