Uneven Innovation, by Jennifer Clark (preface)

PREFACE

T

smart cities project—as a discourse and a practice— first came on the popular scene with initiatives such as IBM Smarter Cities in the early 2010s. As with many technology initiatives, the novelty of the smart cities project captured the public’s imagination. Technology firms, the auto industry, and business consultants and advisers argued that selfdriving cars would soon disrupt urban transportation systems and reshape the built environment as we know it. Soon policy makers, urban planners, and urban designers came to see the smart cities project as an opportunity to integrate the new technologies that were changing industries, including advanced manufacturing, energy, into the infrastructure and operations of cities. The resulting intelligent infrastructure, it was thought, would then serve as the platform for sustained economic growth. The smart cities project thus became an economic development project.

In February 2016, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) released a major report, “Technology and the Future of Cities,” which outlined a strategy to guide federal investment and engagement in smart cities initiatives. Although the future of smart cities initiatives and the HE

xii Preface

policy impact of the original PCAST report remains uncertain, the report itself was revealing. Only a small number of the more than 100 contributors to the report represented the perspective or expertise of the social sciences that are dedicated to cities and the urban scale: urban policy, urban planning, urban geography, urban history, urban economics, or urban administration.

The growing interest in smart cities and the expansion of smart cities programs and projects has thus presented some interesting questions for the academic community: where does one learn about smart cities? Who teaches about smart cities?

What discipline or degree programs prepare students to design, implement, and evaluate smart cities? Increasingly, the smart cities project is challenging the established social science disciplines to rethink their own boundaries and knowledge claims.

The question then becomes, who will define what is required to be a participant in or an analyst of the smart cities project? Who will define the processes and practices that govern the future profession of urban innovation?

Ultimately, the smart cities project is rarely seen for what it is: a technology diffusion challenge operating in a dynamic and contested space between the public and the private sector.

Technology development is the easy part; the real challenge is that the design and deployment of these models into this liminal space where governance, regulation, access, participation, and representation are unclear and the “operating standards” are yet to be fully articulated.

In this book, I tackle that challenge by providing a framework for analyzing the smart cities project that is grounded in the analysis of economic development and embedded in economic geography’s established discourse on uneven development. The result is a way of thinking about urban innovation that recenters the analysis on scale, markets, and regulation. The book produces this

Preface xiii

framework for analyzing uneven innovation and proposes potential interventions in the smart cities project in order to shape a more equitable outcome.

A book project like this one takes a considerable amount of time, energy, expertise, resources, and collaboration. In particular, this work emerges from my experience as director of the Center for Urban Innovation at the Georgia Institute of Technology. As director of that research center, I conducted a number of empirical projects on the emerging smart cities project in collaboration with a team of research scientists, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and faculty colleagues. In addition to the projects we conducted, I had the opportunity to observe many other projects first hand through our participation in the MetroLab Network, the National Institute of Science and Technology’s Global Cities Team Challenge, and conferences, convenings, and summits with professionals from other cities, universities, and companies engaged in producing and analyzing the smart cities project.

Specifically, I want to recognize the work of Thomas Lodato and Emma French, each of whom worked with the Center for Urban Innovation for several years. The projects they worked on are referenced throughout the book. I also appreciate the research contributions of the postdoctoral fellows and graduate students who supported the center’s research, including Supraja Sudharsan, Chris Thayer, Taylor Shelton, Sarah Carnes, Greg Giuffrida, MacKenzie Wood, and Caroline Golin.

I also thank colleagues who contributed to my thinking about this book, how to frame it, and how to present this topic through the lens of economic geography and uneven development and with an eye toward the future of urban planning practice. Those colleagues include the external reviewers who were kind enough to provide comments on the book; my editors at Columbia University Press, Eric Schwartz and Lowell Frye; and students

xiv Preface

in my courses on urban and regional policy. In addition, I am grateful to the following colleagues for their advice, insights, and support: Elizabeth Mynatt, Nichola Lowe, Laura Wolf-Powers, Greg Schrock, Marc Doussard, Harley Etienne, Rachel Weber, Karen Chapple, Amy Glasmeier, Dieter Kogler, David Bailey, Robyn Dowling, Scott Campbell, John-Paul Addie, Helen Lawton Smith, Dieter Kogler, and Jamie Peck. I am also grateful to the American Association of Geographers and the Regional Studies Association for their recognition of my work.

I would also like to thank Benjamin Flowers who—again— put life on hold while I pursued another all-consuming book project. I am grateful for that patience and for the unwavering belief in my capacities. Finally, a special note of appreciation to my parents, Don and Linda Clark; and my adviser, Susan Christopherson. I am nothing if not well-trained. And that is because of them.

“Written by one of the world’s foremost experts, Uneven Innovation is a must-have book for everyone interested in the potential and the pitfalls of the smart cities narrative. It provides both a critical review of the main debates surrounding smart cities and thought-provoking insights into future research and policy agendas.”

—Ben Derudder, Ghent University “Uneven Innovation is a superb, original, and informative intervention into ongoing debates about what a smart city is and its implications across all cities. Grounded in significant original and secondary research, Jennifer Clark links smart cities to urban innovation and the production of markets, crucially arguing that the smart city is an economic rather than technological issue.”

—Robyn Dowling, University of Sydney “Uneven Innovation problematizes the smart city project, showing us the many ways that it continues—rather than disrupts—underlying patterns of inequality, precariousness, and powerlessness. An essential read for practitioners, activists, and scholars seeking to understand and shape the role of technology on the future of cities and the urban workforce.”

—Nichola Lowe, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill “Clark takes on the cult of urban innovation, cutting through the buzz and exposing the false promises of the smart city machine. It’s a searching, critical account that opens horizons beyond the smart city limits while also delving into the belly of the beast. A timely and necessary intervention.”

—Jamie Peck, University of British Columbia “Uneven Innovation provides a new framework for understanding the emergence of the smart city project. It is a geographically and historically nuanced approach to the current focus on smart cities. Clark leaves the reader in no doubt that technology is as likely to deepen as to address existing spatial inequalities.”

—Kevin Ward, University of Manchester Jennifer Clark is professor and head of the City and Regional Planning Section at the Knowlton School of Architecture in the College of Engineering at the Ohio State University. Her previous books include Remaking Regional Economies: Power, Labor, and Firm Strategies in the Knowledge Economy (with Susan Christopherson, 2007) and Working Regions: Reconnecting Innovation and Production in the Knowledge Economy (2013).

Cover design and illustration: Henry Sene Yee Scaffolding image: © Shutterstock COLUMBIA UNIVERSIT Y PRESS | NEW YORK cup.columbia.edu

Printed in the U.S.A.