The complexities of smartification: Exploring horizontal tensions in smart city governance

Desirée Enlund and Katherine Harrison
Additional contact information
Desirée Enlund: Linköping University, Sweden
Katherine Harrison: Linköping University, Sweden

Urban Studies, 2025, vol. 62, issue 10, 2029-2045

Abstract: Smart cities build on visions for using technology to optimise various infrastructural functions andãmake city management more efficient, sustainable, and reliable. However, scholarship on smart cities has drawn attention to how data-centric planning simplifies the complexity of the urban environment and how a dichotomous approach to smart cities as either top-down or bottom-up may be overly reductive. This paper attempts to remedy this divide by highlighting the horizontal tensions in smart city planning, where tensions around implementing smart technologies appear as multiple actors and discourses converge in creating complex governance structures. We offer a case study of how scalar, temporal and social tensions around implementing smart city technologies are negotiated, based on interviews with employees in a Swedish municipality and several municipal corporations. We elaborate on three themes around time, the role of the municipality and infrastructure to gain a deeper understanding of the governance of and attitudes towards smartification. The interviewees described the complexities of implementing smart technology in reality, spanning various scales and intermingling public and private interests. These issues matter for how the municipality and the municipal corporations work with implementing smart technologies, making it anything but a straightforward process.

Keywords: complexity; governance; resistance; smart city; Sweden; vignettes; å¤ æ ‚æ€§; æ²»ç †; 阻力; 智慧城市; ç‘žå…¸; 花絮 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00420980241298607 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:62:y:2025:i:10:p:2029-2045

DOI: 10.1177/00420980241298607

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().