Traveling Models of Sensible Cities: Innovation and Social Inclusiveness in Medellín

• In Event: Smart yet (in)Sensible? Feminist Critical Perspectives on “Smart Cities” II

Abstract

Often presented as a catch-all answer to a wide range of public issues, from environmental degradation to the renewal of political participation, the “smart city” originates in the global North, from early urban utopias to current initiatives driven by IT companies. As cities all over the world appropriate the discourses and practices of “smart” urbanism, we may ask: How is this program translated across different urban sites? Does it mean standardization or diversity? How do technologies, “best practices” and imaginaries of innovation travel across people, organizations and continents? These questions motivate a larger investigation on the politics of urban innovation, studying experiments in mobility and involving extensive fieldwork in Colombia, France and the San Francisco Bay Area. This paper specifically addresses how heterogeneous actors work to make “models” of sociotechnical and civic innovation travel between cities. I argue that such operations of translation depend on government and non-public organizations’ abilities to sense and represent citizens’ concerns and behaviors, as well as on claims of making the city sensible to its inhabitants.

Using in-depth ethnography and interviews conducted with local and national government, NGOs, companies, investors and academics, the paper focuses on the city of Medellín, Colombia, in its efforts to become “the Silicon Valley of Latin America”. With an engaging narrative – from most violent to most innovative city in the world – Colombia’s second largest city has become a national and international exemplar, winning several city innovation awards and branding itself as a leader of an “inclusive smart city” movement. During the last decade, the consecutive administrations conducted “social urbanism” projects, including spectacular architecture in urban slums and extensive mobility infrastructures designed to open up the center to the poorest neighborhoods. Urbanismo Social has took a “smart” turn recently, driven by the municipal utility turned multinational corporation that largely finances urban development. In this imagined future Medellín, civic and technological innovation improve governance by advancing the city’s ability to access all its people and their concerns. Symmetrically, it aims at “educating” the citizens to generate civic engagement and attachment to their city’s public life.

To that end, Medellín mobilizes foreign models and expertise. IBM’s “Chief Data Strategist” stepped in pro bono as the city’s “Chief Data Officer” while it was building its first participatory platform. Administrations in charge of the innovation district stroke a partnership with Silicon Valley’s Singularity University to create “VR, AR and Mixed Reality civic simulations” of autonomous vehicles in public spaces. But the city also engages in boundary work meant to differentiate itself from other “kinds” of smart cities and to promote its own model. By building an innovation district in one of Medellín’s lowest-income areas, City Hall “intrapreneurs” wish to render the city sensible to non-standardized ways of life and give voice to emerging concerned groups, while turning them into innovators who would have the means to organize their own “development” and redefine civic agency.

Author

• Felix TALVARD, Center for the Sociology of Innovation - Mines ParisTech