Paper short abstract:

Smart city strategies tend to avoid or displace informality. Yet informal practices have often been more responsive to the needs of citizens than formal institutions. An inclusive perspective on smarter cities could work with, rather than against, informality.

Paper long abstract:

This paper brings together two bodies of research that are rarely considered together: formalization as a development strategy, and the impact of smart city strategies (SCS). Both have become standard practices for cities that want to be, or be seen to be, at the cutting edge of urban development fashion. However, the emphasis in SCS on embedding sensors connected to cutting edge data analytics begs the question of what makes a city smart. For example, making traffic flow more smoothly in a sprawling, auto-dependent urban region is a very limited conceptualization of smartness. Cities can be "smarter" in a variety of ways, including (1) citizen engagement, (2) low-tech but effective architectural and urban design, and (3) high-tech. After discussing the nature of urban intelligence, I address a key question, particularly for cities of the global South: does converting informality into formal institutions make such cities smarter? In many SCS in the global South, for example in India's ambitious program, urban informality is seen as an immense obstacle to modernizing cities, so that either SCS requires extensive clearance and displacement of informal settlements and practices, or the establishment of greenfield new cities. Yet, many studies show that informal practices are better than formal institutions at meeting the real needs of citizens. Could we make a city smarter by working with, rather than against, informal practices? What kind of SCS could incorporate a more inclusive approach?