Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 A tale of two stories
- 2 The ‘smart city’ story
- 3 What happens when ‘smart’ comes to town
- 4 Unholy alliance: how government, academics and Big Tech are colluding in the takeover of our cities
- 5 Why we’re the problem (and the solution)
- 6 Our disconnected cities: what ‘smart’ should be about
- 7 Yesterday’s cities of the future
- 8 Why it’s different this time
- 9 Why bother to save the city?
- 10 Smart for cities: time for a new story
- Notes
- Index
10 - Smart for cities: time for a new story
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 A tale of two stories
- 2 The ‘smart city’ story
- 3 What happens when ‘smart’ comes to town
- 4 Unholy alliance: how government, academics and Big Tech are colluding in the takeover of our cities
- 5 Why we’re the problem (and the solution)
- 6 Our disconnected cities: what ‘smart’ should be about
- 7 Yesterday’s cities of the future
- 8 Why it’s different this time
- 9 Why bother to save the city?
- 10 Smart for cities: time for a new story
- Notes
- Index
Summary
City planning doesn't exist by right. Like any other area of public policy, it needs to prove its worth, add something and make cities better (however defined) than if it didn't exist. City planning in the modern, comprehensive, open and accountable sense is a relatively new phenomenon and some, such as Churchill, preferred the ‘old ways’. Some still do. The flip side of the romantic, serendipitous, edgy nature of Churchill's flight of fancy was the disease-ridden, overcrowded, unequal reality for many.
At 1.00pm Winston Churchill closed his Cabinet folder and lit another cigar. Sir Edward Bridges drew his attention to the fact that there was still one remaining item. It was town and country planning. The determination of those days that we would not go back to the 1930s had inspired Beveridge, the Cabinet White Paper on full employment and also the three basic reports on town and country planning by Uthwatt, Barlow and Scott….
W.S. Morrison had assessed these reports and was presenting his conclusions. Winston was not amused. “Ah yes”, said he. “All this stuff about planning and compensation and betterment. Broad vistas and all that. But give me the eighteenth century alley, where footpads lurk and the harlot plies her trade, and none of this new fangled planning doctrine”.
Churchill was writing his own story of the city, and it's one that persists today in the views of many who would argue for the state to step back to let the market dictate and decide, a view that characterises the attitude of both left-leaning anarchists and right-wing neoliberals. The ‘smart city’ story is similar in many ways to Churchill's poetic image. Let the city be the sum of its parts. We don't need to direct cities because digital technology will provide the answers and a route to the future that it will shape. Yet, as I’ve argued throughout this book, not only is this assurance false, but smart also presents an existential threat to our cities and the future of humanity. It's time to write a new story of the city, one that reclaims a central part for collective, open, inclusive and future-looking management and action.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Forgotten CityRethinking Digital Living for our People and the Planet, pp. 187 - 206Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2021