Making sense of smart cities: addressing present shortcomings

This commentary characterises and critiques research on smart cities. I argue that much of the writing and rhetoric about smart cities seeks to appear non-ideological, commonsensical and pragmatic. More critically orientated scholarship, while making vital conceptual and political interventions, presently has four shortcomings that inhibit making sense of and refashioning the smart city agenda: the lack of detailed genealogies of the concept and initiatives, the use of canonical examples and one-size fits all narratives, an absence of indepth empirical case studies of specific smart city initiatives and comparative research that contrasts smart city developments in different locales and weak collaborative…