Smart as a City: The Politics of Test-Bed Urbanism

Smart as a City provides a rich ethnographic investigation into how smartness is received and negotiated in a midsize US city. Burcu Baykurt follows the work of civic entrepreneurs, local residents, and city officials in Kansas City, Missouri, where Google tested a citywide gigabit service and the local government launched a series of smart city pilot projects in transportation, public housing, and municipal services. Baykurt redefines smartness as a collective effort to spotlight a city’s ...