SMART CITY CONTROL ROOMS: The Rewiring of Local Governance Landscapes in India

Abstract

Smart city control rooms are prominent components of the smart city discourse. They embody a long-standing dream to visualize and manage multiple urban processes in real time through the collation of data flows. Previous research has produced important insights into the design, construction and operation of these facilities. However, this research has largely overlooked the fundamental changes to political and institutional conditions of the city that take place through the implementation of smart city control rooms. In this article, we examine how smart city control rooms are reconfiguring local governance landscapes in India through an in-depth case study of the city of Kochi. We apply the notion of the urban governance dispositif to Kochi's control room in the making to characterize how the facility is co-created alongside a rewiring of the institutions, infrastructures and imaginaries of urban local governance in the city. We demonstrate how, in this process, the smart city control room extends central government control and strengthens central and state government collaboration in urban local governance while legitimizing ICT companies as key actors of urban development. This study illustrates how smart city projects—even when technically stumbling—generate fundamental long-term implications to how cities are understood and managed.