A Tale of Two Cities: Smart Cities in the US-China Trade/Tech War

• In Event: “Smart Infrastructure” as Relational Practice: Cities, Nations and Corporate Strategies in Framing Future Cities

Abstract

Smart cities are changing the meaning and function of cities, as well as the interaction between city and people. Being equipped by the global Internet standards, cloud infrastructures, and the multinational AI/big data industries which provide digital infrastructures, cities are no longer just a local space, but are integrated into a transnational regime with constantly changing boundaries and compositions. Such integration brings up a series of questions: how do cities situate themselves in the constantly blurring boundaries between the global and the local? How do different communities perceive “smartness” and interact with highly digitized cities? The tension between localization and globalization is particularly evident in the smart cities development in China and the US. The historical and cultural distinctions, coupled with the ongoing Sino-US trade/tech war make smart cities not just a place for local residents, but a showcase where constant economic, technical, political and diplomatic negotiation and competition take place.

Taking a multi-sited ethnographic approach, this paper selects two historical cities- Charlottesville, US and Hangzhou, China - to address the proposed questions. Through historical data and interviews with local communities and smart city innovators, the paper develops a comparative angle to examine different government policies, urban planning strategies and obstacles of transforming historical cities into smart ones. In addition, it shows how increasing digital urbanization, together with the Sino-US trade has triggered unexpected connections and boundary reorganization between these two seemingly unrelated cities, and constitutes a tale of two cities in the era of AI/big Data.

Author

• Sharon Tsai-hsuan Ku, University of Virginia