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Contribution short abstract

This paper examines “smart commons” in Hangzhou under China’s digital governance push. A case study of an elderly neighbourhood shows minimal digital uptake; instead, social practices create commons in unintended ways, revealing collaborative forms beyond official smartification agendas.

Contribution long abstract

This paper examines the making of “smart commons” in the context of China’s ongoing push for digital governance. The national “smartness mandate” requires urban management and community life to be increasingly digitalised, largely in the service of more effective top-down governance. Hangzhou has become a pioneer in this process, celebrated for its City Brain system and experiments in smart urbanism. Alongside these efforts, however, policy discourses also increasingly emphasise the need to make smartification people-centred, particularly through initiatives aimed at community-building. Focusing on an old inner-city neighbourhood in Hangzhou, inhabited mostly by elderly residents, the paper analyses a flagship experiment in applying smart technologies differently. The project includes a shared kitchen and community activities, yet the actual use of digital tools remains limited, with social interaction and collective practices taking centre stage. The case suggests that while smart technologies excel at producing more efficient, governable communities, their participatory promise often remains unfulfilled. Instead, what emerges are forms of “smart commons” that arise in unforeseen, unintended ways, rooted more in everyday collaboration than in data infrastructures, and that remain difficult to administer within a top-down governance framework.