Civic Entrepreneurialism in the Age of Smart Cities

• In Event: Smart Stuff: Internet of Things, Smart Cities, and Urban Broadband Networks

Abstract

This paper examines what kind of civic voices are cultivated as municipalities partner with tech companies to build smart cities. Rather than a top-down or bottom-up approach, it highlights the role of civic entrepreneurialism -- a new mode of public participation that blends civic duties with entrepreneurial rituals -- in legitimizing the pervasive enthusiasm around the idea that cities can achieve growth and progress through smart technologies. Drawing on a two-year ethnographic project in an aspiring smart city, this paper argues that civic entrepreneurs 1) deliberately defy the distinction between public and private interests, 2) attempt to build solidarity among entrepreneurial residents to mitigate their own precarity in the digital economy, and 3) legitimize a particular “public” voice by catering to the interests of tech companies and social organizations simultaneously, while displacing other potential critiques of the smart city.

Author

• Burcu Baykurt, Columbia U