The privatised city: technology and public-private partnerships in the smart city

Abstract

The ‘smart city’ movement asks new questions about the role of private actors in urban governance. Smart technology providers, because of their unique position, influence policymaking through their products and services. Yet, the effect of this role on public values remains unaddressed. This article considers how the use of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in smart city development challenges public values, particularly accountability and transparency. It shows how both PPPs and smart cities frame for-profit firms as central actors in creating efficient and innovative public services and infrastructure. The risks privatisation poses for public values have to be reassessed, in light of the issue of vendor lock-in and the value-embedding capacity of technology. Furthermore, this article suggests that to mitigate such risks, data protection legislation is insufficient: the wider notion of publicisation, namely the extension of public norms to private actors acting for public purposes, needs to be re-examined in the context of the smart city. Therefore, this article contributes to the literature with a novel discussion of the possibilities and limits of using smart city PPPs as tools to safeguard public values.