(Dis)Connecting the Digital City

Among smart city enthusiasts, digital inclusion — the idea that nobody in the city should be deprived of digital technologies — is an oft-repeated social objective. Despite lofty commitments, the smart city is still a work-in-progress and its record in fostering social inclusion and diversity has been dismal so far. If technological interventions are as apt to deepen divides as redress them, why do proponents insist on the smart city’s promise of lessening urban inequalities? Rather than trying to ascertain whether these concerns for digital inclusion are a rhetorical flourish or a genuine attempt at a do-over in delivering equity, my work takes smart city enthusiasts’ recognition of inequality as an object of research. I examine how actors at the core of the smart city — public officials, tech companies, and local entrepreneurs — attempt to rectify perennial urban divides via smart technologies, and how those who are the target of such interventions respond. For the last five years, I have been studying Kansas City’s digital transition toward becoming “the most connected city” in the world, a journey that started off with becoming the first place to receive Google Fiber back in 2011 and continued with a smart city pilot that was launched in 2015 in collaboration with Cisco, Sprint, Think Big, and Smart City Media. Between 2015 and 2018, I lived in Kansas City, Missouri, to observe how this pilot was designed, implemented, and evaluated. I also interviewed 110 people about their experiences of living in a place whose future seemingly relied on digital infrastructures.

[Burcu Baykurt is an assistant professor of urban futures and communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Baykurt is the 2019 recipient of the Charles Benton Early Career Scholar Award presented by the Research Conference on Communications, Information and Internet Policy (TPRC).]