Serendipitous triggers and strategic turns of reflexivity: how ‘smart’ traveled in and out of Rotterdam

Jiska Engelbert and Mariana Fried

Chapter 4 in Reflexive Urban Governance, 2025, pp 64-82 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Reflexive urban governance is often imagined as a planned, structured, joint, and linear process. It is seen as a process in which looking back allows a group of different but cooperating stakeholders to collectively learn, to look forward towards a more inclusive and just city. However, this chapter's qualitative and historical reconstruction of how the urban label ‘smart’ has traveled in and out of the Dutch Municipality of Rotterdam reveals a complementary yet different perspective on reflexive urban governance. It is a perspective that situates drivers of and opportunities for reflexivity in urban governance much more in how external triggers, micro-politics, organizational power play, and local actors’ tactics interact. This chapter, then, calls for a critical—albeit cautionary—reconsideration of linear and planned imaginations of reflexive urban governance.

Keywords: Smart city; Urban labels; Municipalities; Traveling concepts; Struggles over meaning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781803927336
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