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Title: (D)evolving smartness: exploring the changing modalities of smart city making in Africa
The paper identifies an under-researched mode of smart city-making in Africa characterized by municipal deployments of ICT-driven innovations. This departs from typical framings that view African smart city development as nationally driven, master planned new city developments. An in-depth analysis of the City of Cape Town’s Digital City Strategy provides insights into the mechanisms and processes grounding smart city concepts in African municipalities. Thus, situating Africa’s municipal ICT-driven strategies in the context of a global discourse of smart urbanism and local (and continental) processes of decentralized governance reform. In Cape Town, these global and local forces converge to drive ICT-inspired urbanism that reinforce market-oriented logics of urban governance, largely at the expense of transformative and contextually sensitive ICT deployments. By highlighting the multi-scalar production of smart cities inspired by global discourse yet subjected to local dynamics, the findings offer insights into the political realities of municipal ICT deployments in Africa.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1828010
PAR ID:
10433403
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Urban Geography
ISSN:
0272-3638
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1 to 25
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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