Paper short abstract:

This research investigates how the making of perceptible "site" enables, transmutes, and keeps alive the fantasy of futurist new city development in the condition of material scarcity in post-colonial Kenya.

Paper long abstract:

Like many other developmental projects in Kenya, the state-led smart city development- the Konza Technopolis was criticized as a “failed promise.” Yet despite a growing sense of disillusionment, the aspiration for a smart city never falls off. In this article, I explored the significance of a set of mundane practices - “site visit”- organized by the development authority of Konza Technopolis in restoring and upgrading the aspiration of smart city development in Kenya. Once a strategy for the development authority to attract potential investors, site visit gradually performs to resolve doubts and attract relevant stakeholders in the wake of growing critiques. By rendering the not-yet realized smart city physically near, site visit contributes to producing intersubjective spatiotemporal horizons which are constitutive to the rhythm of ICT driven development and the sociotechnical imaginary of the “Silicon Savannah” in post-colonial Kenya. Through analyzing site visits organized by the development authority from 2019 to 2021, I suggest that the post-colonial development in Kenya should not be simply taken as a technological or spatial fix on the part of capitalist regimes of different scale, speed, and intensity, but as the assemblage of intersubjective values produced in condensed spacetime as practiced on the ground.