There's more to smart cities than technology and traffic management. Really smart cities are cities that think about the future and how to ensure everyone can enjoy the benefits of urban improvements. This presentation seeks to challenge conventional thinking on smart cities and raise the questions that really need to be addressed.

1. Trouble at t’mill
A Luddite analysis of Smart[er] Cities?
Julian Dobson • Urban Pollinators

2. Luddite (n.)
‘Person engaged in
seeking to obstruct
progress’
Really?

3. ‘In the foolishness of
their hearts, they
imagined that the
maintenance and well-
doing of the industrious
poor were objects of a
greater consequence
than the enrichment of
a few individuals...’
~ Lord Byron, 1812

4. The Luddite
agenda
~ skills
~ livelihoods
~ communities

5. ‘When capital enlists
science in her service,
the refractory hand of
labour will always be
taught docility.’
~ Andrew Ure, 1835

6. Can slower be smarter?
five principles for ‘smart cities’

7. Thought
before
technology
it’s too easy to do
something because
everyone else thinks
a good idea

8. Conversation
before control
do our technologies
open up
conversations or
remove interaction?

9. The potential
before the
problem
do we regard cities as
social problems to be
solved, or as places
of possibility?

10. Fun before
fear
are we applying
technology to build
quality of life, or to
‘deliver us from evil’?

11. Cities for the next generation
100 years on, what will we think was smart?

12. Smarter
sustainable
livelihoods
how will we help people
up the ‘livelihoods
ladder’ - from surviving
to coping, to adapting,
to accumulating?

13. Smarter
lifetime
communities
how is technology
helping us create
communities where
people can stay
throughout their lives?

14. Smarter civic
networking
are we putting social
tools in citizens’ hands
and helping them learn
how to use them to
create change?

15. Smarter
access to
finance
how can we build on
the success of
crowdfunding to create
opportunities for
enterprise?

16. Smarter
ways to
define value
how can we ensure our
cities encourage
smarter perceptions of
what creates social and
economic value?

17. Smarter
thinking on
placekeeping
if smart cities don’t
preserve and sustain
our natural environment,
how smart can they
claim to be?

18. Smart is a state of mind
skills • livelihoods • communities