Imaginaries of Sustainability: The Techno-Politics of Smart Cities

Sustainability, particularly as articulated in cities, acts as an imaginary that shapes science, technology and social order to attain desirable futures. Imaginaries of sustainability represent visions of social and natural well-being now and into the future. Like sociotechnical imaginaries, imaginaries of sustainability are both descriptive of potential futures and prescriptive about the futures that ought to be pursued. Proponents of smart cities tout the ability of technology and big data to accelerate democratization and public participation, yet these projects carry embedded assumptions about knowledge production, technological risks, public engagement and broader visions of the good life. Smart cities discourses and technologies shape and become enrolled in both imaginaries of sustainability and sociotechnical imaginaries. Through case studies of smart cities and sustainability in London and New York City, notions of technological progress are shown to be linked with progress on environmental and social sustainability issues. In both New York and London, smart cities are entangled with techno-political projects related to innovation and economic development as well as normative commitments to sustainability. Though imaginaries of sustainability present a set of goals and values for science and technology, techno-politics dominated by corporate actors and techno-scientific optimists may ultimately prevent cities from opening up space for alternative imaginaries.