The right to the smart city in the Global South: A research agenda

Tooran Alizadeh and Deepti Prasad
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Tooran Alizadeh: The University of Sydney, Australia
Deepti Prasad: The University of Sydney, Australia

Urban Studies, 2024, vol. 61, issue 3, 426-444

Abstract: Urban research has increasingly embraced the Global South, as recent critical scholarship continues opening to Southern cities, scholars and ideas generated from the South. Here, we (the authors, two women of the Global South) think strategically about ‘the Southern urban critique’, ‘the right to the city’ and ‘smart cities’– as well as some limitations of doing so. Intrigued by the fast pace of smart city development across the Global South, and informed by the ongoing critical debates and increasing empirical work focused on the unfolding of ‘smart’ in the Southern cities, we put forward a research agenda ‘the right to the smart city in the Global South’. Through three lenses of expose, propose and politicise this research agenda articulates the smart city shortcomings from a Southern critical perspective to elevate the ongoing empirical studies on the subject, to shed light on the gaps in knowledge, and to produce a normative alternative vision for ‘just smart city’. Our challenge to readers is to help create such smart cities, to engage with and reflect on the arguments in this positioning piece, and then complement them with further normative, future-oriented work – informed by empirical knowledge – to fully map out the particularities of an alternative Southern smart city, to inform planning and policymaking for just smart cities, and to enact the right to the smart city in the Global South.

Keywords: Global South; smart city; southern urban critique; the right to the city; urban theory; å…¨ç ƒå —æ–¹; 智慧城市; å —æ–¹åŸŽå¸‚æ‰¹åˆ¤; åŸŽå¸‚æ ƒåˆ©; åŸŽå¸‚ç †è®º (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:61:y:2024:i:3:p:426-444

DOI: 10.1177/00420980231183167

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