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Scientific Article details

Title Smart-sustainability: A new urban fix?
ID_Doc 41581
Authors Martin, C; Evans, J; Karvonen, A; Paskaleva, K; Yang, DJ; Linjordet, T
Title Smart-sustainability: A new urban fix?
Year 2019
Published
DOI 10.1016/j.scs.2018.11.028
Abstract Urban policy increasingly positions smart urban development as a transformative approach to deliver sustainability. In this paper, we question the transformative credentials of smartness and argue that it is better understood as a partial fix for the economic, environmental and social challenges faced by cities. Drawing on the urban sustainability and smart city literatures, we develop the concept of the urban smart-sustainability fix. This concept focuses on how smart-sustainable city initiatives selectively integrate digital and environmental agendas via entrepreneurial forms of urban governance. We develop this concept by examining how the urban smart-sustainability fix is constructed in the European Commission's flagship smart cities and communities lighthouse projects, focusing on the Triangulum initiative. Our research reveals three elements of the urban smart-sustainability fix: (1) the spatial development of smart-sustainable districts; (2) the digitisation of urban infrastructure to reveal hidden processes; and, (3) collaborative experimentation with low-carbon and digital technologies. We argue that this has produced urban districts that are attempting to reduce their carbon emissions while promoting green economic growth. The main aim of the urban smart-sustainability fix is to make the urban realm more manageable resulting in amplification, rather than transformation, of the dominant ecological modernisation agenda of sustainable development.
Author Keywords Smart city; Urban sustainability; Smart-sustainability fix; Ecological modernisation agenda
Index Keywords Index Keywords
Document Type Other
Open Access Open Access
Source Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED); Social Science Citation Index (SSCI)
EID WOS:000455274500055
WoS Category Construction & Building Technology; Green & Sustainable Science & Technology; Energy & Fuels
Research Area Construction & Building Technology; Science & Technology - Other Topics; Energy & Fuels
PDF https://pure.tue.nl/ws/files/115703698/1_s2.0_S2210670718302191_main.pdf
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