Abstract
This paper examines the experience of individuals in urban spaces that have been planned as ‘smart’ through the inclusion of smart technologies. It explores how individuals encounter these everyday spaces in unintended ways when they (dis)engage with smart technologies. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with public housing residents in Singapore, this paper draws attention to the nuanced everyday engagements individuals have with smart technologies. Firstly, some technologies have been introduced in these spaces as part of larger smart urbanism projects that individuals do not engage with. Here, the disconnect between the top-down implementation of smart urbanism and its realisation on the ground creates tension that can be understood through dynamic affections and disaffections. Secondly, there are non-technological aspects of living in these smart estates that emerge as significant, such as green spaces. Here, there were tensions between the dual desires for green spaces and increased convenience and access to facilities and services through development. This paper shows how there are entanglements beyond the technological that implicate broader socio-political and cultural processes and impact what it means to be entangled in the mechanisms of a smart city. Thus, this paper moves beyond demonstrating how smart technologies are reconfiguring everyday spaces and urban relations and assessments of the smart city as good or bad. Instead, this paper highlights the value of the affective and emotional landscapes of the everyday in understanding the realisation of smart urbanism from the perspective of smart city residents.
Presenters
Nurul Amillin HussainAssistant Professor, Sociology/ School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, South West, Singapore
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Smart City, Affect Theory, Urban Geography, Qualitative Methods
