Climate smart cities? Technologies of climate governance in Brazil

Cities are fundamental agents and spaces in global climate governance, whether through their participation in transnational climate networks, urban sustainability innovation, experimentation, or the use of low-carbon digital technologies in urban governance, a phenomenon known as climate-smart city. In Brazil, few studies have addressed this issue. Thus, here I analyze the political agenda and economic dynamics involved in the transformation of Brazil's second largest city, Rio de Janeiro, into a climate-smart city. I develop an original conceptualization of “techno-utopian smart city” and apply this framework to analyze the case of Rio. Empirically, I perform a thematic content analysis, including the coding of policy documents, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews. Results suggest that the smart city agenda is still limited to address the challenges of climate change. While smart city and climate policies have been sparsely integrated, “smart” urbanism has privileged the financial, economic, and political dividends of a techno-driven urban transformation, rather than focusing on citizen well-being, climate change mitigation, and adaptation. My conceptualization and empirical analysis suggest that Rio de Janeiro has been i) framing climate governance as a technical issue instead of a complex social challenge, ii) neglecting the environmental footprint of smart technologies, and iii) collecting citizens’ private data with low levels of transparency.