From Chaos to Control (Rooms)

QC 20250901

Abstract

Smart cities represent a dominant urban development discourse advocating for the use of technology and data to enhance urban services, sustainability, and quality of life. This discourse aims to integrate systems like transport, energy, and communication through digital innovation, fostering efficient and livable cities. While early research emphasized the global diffusion of the smart city concept, and later studies examined “actually existing smart cities” in local contexts, there remains limited focus on national smart city programs and their role in shaping urban governance.

National smart city programs materially transform urban infrastructure through technologies such as sensors, mobile apps, and integrated urban control rooms. However, it has been established that these programs not only introduce new technological tools but also reorganize governance by creating new institutions and enabling the rise of technical experts within urban administration. Existing scholarship often isolates these dimensions of technology, expertise, or organization. In this thesis, I argue that they must be explored in their intertwined evolution within national smart city frameworks.

Using theoretical insights from science and technology studies, urban studies, and organization studies, the thesis asks: (1) How do national smart city programs generate new governance dispositifs through the deployment of new technologies? (2) How do national smart city programs introduce new technical experts into urban governance dispositifs? (3) How do new urban governance dispositifs created by national smart city programs result in organizational change in urban local governance?

These questions are addressed through a qualitative case study of India’s Smart Cities Mission, an exemplary case of a national smart city program. The study focuses on the development of integrated command and control centers (ICCCs) in Kochi and Vishakhapatnam, revealing how these control rooms - even as they fall short of achieving integrated and data-mediated governance - facilitate the incursion of the central government into urban local governance where they previous played little direct role while simultaneously enabling the emergence of information and communication technology (ICT) specialists as key urban governance actors. Using the concept of boundary work, the thesis then illustrates how these ICT specialists expand their epistemic authority into urban governance. Focusing on institutional and organizational changes to urban local governance through national smart city programs, the thesis unpacks how institutional logics associated with the smart city hybridize and conflict to shape new local governance organizations called smart city Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) in Kochi. Finally, the implementation of the smart city in Kochi is marked by persistent political contestation—challenging the depoliticized vision projected by smart city narratives.

Overall, the thesis demonstrates how national smart city programs have intertwined technological, political and organizational effects on urban local governance. For those interested in urban governance in India, this research demonstrates the long-term sociotechnical impacts of central government led urban development programs. Finally, for practitioners and policy makers, the thesis provides a deep dive into the impact of the Smart Cities Mission in Kochi.

urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-369106