Smart Cities are bad and colonial

A number of parallels can be drawn between colonial cities and the current generation of entrepreneurial new cities. Similarities can be seen not just in the overarching utopian belief that new masterplanned cities will inevitably be successful and live up to promises, but that they are a suitable scale at which to solve urban problems, are a productive use of resources and represent an appropriate approach for advancing the economy. The prioritization of grandiose and top-down efforts over more incremental urban interventions recalls the muscular monumentalism of the colonial era, which sought to visually communicate and normalize uneven power relations (Vale, 2008). New cities continue to emphasize the importance the British Empire placed on the construction of physically distinct new cities built on a tabula rasa, while perpetuating power hierarchies and institutional dynamics driving urban mega developments. With few exceptions, current new cities are a phenomenon found primarily in former colonies in Asia and Africa (e.g. Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, India, Morocco, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Angola and others). Further empirical research into the internalization of colonial ideology would reveal the various ways in which new urban mega developments and utopian cities are shaped by colonial legacies. While the designers of post-independence cities strived, with varying levels of success, to overcome social barriers and to be inclusive, both colonial and current new cities perpetuate geographies of exclusion through expropriating land and cutting the poor off from their livelihoods (Das, 2012). If Dholera is constructed as planned, it will be fascinating to investigate the existing social divisions exacerbated by the master plan, how they are being challenged and the differences between Dholera and life at its periphery. My work in the context of Malaysia has revealed that colonial notions of race and districts of racial ‘purity’ have been resurrected in the new master-planned capital of Putrajaya (Moser, 2010, 2012a, 2012b) and comparative work from elsewhere in the former colonial world may uncover similar legacies. While scholars have demonstrated how transcolonial genealogies of power and political economy reveal the constitutive role of colonialism (Venn, 2009), more research is required to help us understand the entrenched historical hierarchies and current social divisions manifested in new cities. The language of colonial powers and current technocrats driving new cities treat their endeavours as inevitable and urgent, while employing utopian language to rationalize and sell the project. Both colonial powers and current elites pushing for the construction of Dholera exploit concerns about rampant and out-of-control urban growth, overcrowding, pollution and poverty in order to rapidly seize land, change laws and accrue power. Current new city projects also echo the language of the colonial ‘civilizing’ mission as the poor are treated as an obstacle holding the nation back from modernizing and achieving success on the global stage. Dholera and Prime Minister Modi’s planned 100 new smart cities can be understood as yet another effort at reinvention, which once again implies that a ‘backwards’ and stagnant India requires the guidance of modern and technologically savvy Western-sanctioned global ‘experts’ who promise that utopian corporate cities will spark economic growth, modernize the locals and lift the rural poor out of poverty. Rather than architects, planners and the other ‘experts’ who circulated throughout the British Empire rebuilding the colonies based on the latest Western planning philosophies, the ‘expert’ mantle has now passed to corporate executives, ‘visionaries’ and ‘thought leaders’ from Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, McKinsey and other technology and consultancy companies. Such experts consistently recommend elaborate projects in former colonies from which they directly benefit financially and which foster a relationship of dependence. For example, Cisco, a multinational corporation selling networking equipment, has been at the forefront of new smart city design, its pie`ce de re´sistance being Songdo, South Korea. Cisco directly benefits from selling the idea of smart cities and taking on more new cities as clients, an endeavour at which they have been highly successful; Cisco is helping to create clones of Songdo in China and acts as consultants on a variety of new cities, including Saudi Arabia’s four new ‘economic’ cities, the Gujarat International Finance TecCity and Yachay Knowledge City in Ecuador. The expensive visions offered by international experts of a modern, clean and prosperous urban future seem irresistible to many aspirational ruling elites who are ‘seduced’ by slick presentations, computer-generated images of gleaming new cities and the promise of economic miracles (Bunnell and Das, 2010). The corporate role in current new cities is a departure from post-independence new cities, although further research may reveal dynamics similar to those found in new cities of the colonial era. Current new cities embody a planning strategy that is out of step with many progressive planning approaches, which advocate community consultation and incremental interventions rather than top-down master planning and view the urban poor as resourceful, innovative and creative. Furthermore, the dynamism and inclusivity of the ‘right to the city’ movement and self-build approaches are completely absent from discussions about new master-planned cities. ‘world-class’ services, new cities are inextricably linked to the discipline of planning’s century-long engagement with the master planning urban mega projects in the Global South. Further empirical work that places new master-planned cities in a broader historical trajectory will demonstrate entrenched patterns of elite power and internalized colonial assumptions about urbanism and modernity. Urban geographers can fruitfully draw on the work of planning historians to trace the deep roots of power relations and institutions that are (re)gaining strength and political clout as new cities in India and other former colonies pivot away from postindependence goals of inclusivity to embrace cities that are ‘fast,’ smart and neo-liberal.