Technologies of austerity urbanism: the "smart city" agenda in Italy (2011-2013)

In the heyday of the late 2000s financial crisis, austerity urbanism became a dominant practice of state financial restructuring-an intensification in the encroachment of the neoliberal project into the agendas of local governments. In the specific case of Italy, which faced political and economic d...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Urban geography 2016-05, Vol.37 (4), p.514-534
Main Author: Pollio, Andrea
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
austerity
Austerity policy
Cities
Containment
Cost control
Discourses
Economic crisis
Government spending
Innovations
Italy
Local government
neoliberal urbanism
Neoliberalism
Policy making
Psychological distress
Public finance
Reorganization
Smart cities
Technology
Urban studies
Urbanism
Vocabulary
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Summary:In the heyday of the late 2000s financial crisis, austerity urbanism became a dominant practice of state financial restructuring-an intensification in the encroachment of the neoliberal project into the agendas of local governments. In the specific case of Italy, which faced political and economic distress between 2011 and 2013, "smart city" policies became one of the foundational political technologies for the implementation of austerity measures. In this paper, I analyse how the smart city provided a lexicon for urban austerity through a series of different sites and vehicles of policymaking, from practitioners to companies and other institutions. I argue that smart city discourses and practices functioned as a political technology that was effective in justifying cost containment measures and supporting the shift to pro-innovation public expenditures. Yet, at the same time, the smart city techno-utopian vocabulary created spaces where other meanings and, potentially, alternative political outcomes were made possible by diverse alignments of knowledge and expertise.
ISSN:0272-3638
1938-2847
DOI:10.1080/02723638.2015.1118991