(Re)defining the smart city at national level? Coexisting narratives of urban sustainability governance in Germany

Abstract

While the question of how the Smart City (SC) concept is mobilised at global and local levels is well researched, few studies have focused on the national level. In this article, we seek to better understand the role of the national level regarding the embedding and creation of SCs. More specifically, we explore the German Smart Cities Dialogue Platform, established by the German government in 2016 as a place where ways of thinking about and acting on the SC are produced and stabilised. Drawing on key concepts of governmentality, we analyse dominant narratives of the SC in Germany, focusing on how the national SC discourse shapes the governance of urban sustainability. We show that the national level in Germany plays a decisive role in embedding and creating the SC, as it mediates between globally prevailing ideas of the SC and local realities. By linking the SC to nationally prevailing values, norms and political cultures such as sustainability, the common good, civil rights and digital sovereignty, a corrective to globally dominant techno-euphoric narratives of the SC is created. At the same time, the (re)definition at the national level promotes an ecological modernisation approach to sustainable urban development to the exclusion of alternative visions of urban sustainability pathways.