Smart city returns

Abstract

India’s smart city plans have much in common with ‘high-tech’ and ‘intelligent’ city developments elsewhere. Among the similarities with the Multimedia Super Corridor in Malaysia in the 1990s is the role of seductive language and technologically utopian imaginings of the future in legitimizing land acquisition and dispossession. Geographers need to continue to look critically at smart city discourse and its inequitable socio-spatial effects. It is also important, however, that geographers consider possibilities for more progressive smart technology–enabled futures. The case of Malaysia shows not only that the implementation of smart and intelligent city projects faces resistance but also that socio-technical outcomes tend to exceed the plans of corporate and political interests.