Abstracts Geography

Smart City Planning

by Ane Vierø

The ‘smart city’ is becoming an increasingly prominent phenomenon within urban development. Exactly what it means for a city to be ‘smart’ and how to get there is however unclear, and increasingly contested. This project investigates how the use of smart city technologies can change the role and practice of urban planning, based on the different perceptions of what a smart city is and how cities should become smarter in the future. The analysis takes its starting point in a case study of Digital Matatus, a project aiming at improving the paratransit system in Nairobi with the use of smartphones, spatial data and mapping. The results from this case study provide a foundation of a further discussion of how the process of urban planning might be transformed by the increasing use of information and communication technologies in the planning and management of urban areas. While the outcome of the use of smart city technologies within urban planning depends on the context and implementation, it can from this analysis be concluded that smart city technologies offer many new possibilities for the planning of cities, especially in relation to a greater participation from citizens. The development toward a more fluid and continuous planning process and the central role of data in the planning practice do however also produce a range of new challenges for the planning practice. While the use of smart city technologies has the potential to create a far more open and inclusive planning practice, people’s different preconditions for making use of these technologies mean that the smart city might end up reinforcing already existing disparities in citizens’ ability to influence the future development of cities. Advisors/Committee Members: Ebbensgaard, Casper (advisor).