Smart Barcelona: the gap between inspiring rhetoric and lackluster implementation in transformative approaches

Tooran Alizadeh, Eshita Dutia and Rebecca Clements

Planning Practice & Research, 2024, vol. 39, issue 5, 839-854

Abstract: Barcelona is championed as the exemplary radical smart city, and yet scholarly understandings are typically limited to its theoretical approach and policy rhetoric. This paper, however, interrogates the extent to which Smart Barcelona has been implemented. It deploys a novel method of thematically analyzing 51 public talks by Barcelona’s first Chief Technology Officer, cross-examined with policy documents – to unpack the smart agenda. This agenda is then contrasted with insights into the ‘actual smart city’ implementation via interviews with 10 key informants. Findings reveal a lackluster progress including limited citizen input, ongoing reliance on ‘Big Tech’, and missing integration capacity.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02697459.2024.2369977 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:cpprxx:v:39:y:2024:i:5:p:839-854

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cppr20

DOI: 10.1080/02697459.2024.2369977

Access Statistics for this article

Planning Practice & Research is currently edited by Vincent Nadin

More articles in Planning Practice & Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().