Under contemporary capitalism and platform urbanism, domesticity distorts to take on new forms. Dwelling is simultaneously decentralised and re-distributed via digital and urban networks. This ...article argues that these new forms of dwelling necessitate new modes of critique – ones primed for this networked, spatially distributed condition. It proposes to supplement typological and topographical approaches to dwelling with the more 'anexactly rigorous' relational cartography offered by the field of topology. The article begins with an outline of topology, drawing on mathematics, philosophy and geography towards a reconceptualisation of architecture as a boundary-drawing apparatus. The topological condition of modern dwelling is then retraced as a genealogy of interpenetrating edifices, mediating membranes, and prosthetic equipment, which have prefigured present-day formations of domesticity. The second half of the article trains this topological lens onto three architectural tendencies in response to platform urbanism: convivial arrangements of networked living, commoning platforms and thresholds, and counter-protocols of distributed domesticity. Through unpacking these trajectories, the article illustrates the potential that a topological approach engenders via new modes of mapping, critiquing, resisting and subverting the unequally distributed agency and power underlying the circuits of platform urbanism.
"To thematize requires a project to select its objects, deploy them in a bounded field, and submit them to disciplined inquiry" (Guha, 1997, xv)
Mainstream urban scholarship envisions urbanization as ...a global process that is best achieved via the worldwide application of the development mechanisms pioneered in the advanced capitalist countries-currently, those of neoliberal globalization. Yet the repeated failure of this vision to deliver on its promise of wealth for all and ecological sustainability compels urban scholars to rethink mainstream presumptions. By means of a ten-point manifesto, we argue that provincializing global urbanism creates space from which to challenge urban theories that treat "northern" urbanization as the norm, to incorporate the expertise and perspectives of urban majorities, and to imagine and enact alternative urban futures.
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•Presents a comprehensive smart city conceptualisation to inform policymaking and practice.•Places Songdo, Masdar, Amsterdam, San Francisco and Brisbane under the smart city ...microscope.•Reveals the strength and weakness points of the investigated global best smart city cases.•Generates a clearer and consolidated understanding on the making of successful smart city practice.
Transforming urban areas into prosperous, liveable, and sustainable settlements is a longstanding goal for local governments. Today, countless urban settlements across the globe have jumped into the so-called ‘smart city’ bandwagon to achieve this goal. Under the smart city agenda, presently, many government agencies are attempting to engineer an urban transformation to tackle urban prosperity, liveability, and sustainability issues mostly through the means of technology solutions. Nonetheless, the notion of smart cities is ambiguous, and there are limited conceptual frameworks to assist cities and their administrations in understanding the big picture view of this urban development paradigm. The aim of this paper is to generate a clear understanding on the making of successful smart city practices. This is done by elaborating the smart cities notion through a multidimensional conceptual framework, examining smart city best practices across the globe—i.e., Songdo, Masdar, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Brisbane—, and providing insights of smart city approaches from these cases. The findings of the study disclose the need for a comprehensive smart city conceptualisation to inform policymaking and consequently the practice. This will help in the formation of a much-needed smart urbanism model for the resilient settlements of the climate emergency era.
Park Won‐soon, the former mayor of Seoul, put forward a new vision of Seoul as a progressive city, and one of his signatures was the promotion of a new urban regeneration policy called the Seoul‐type ...Urban Regeneration Model (SUR). It was first presented as a solution to compressed and profit‐oriented urban redevelopment but evolved into an alternative model which conveyed the worlding desire of the Seoul Metropolitan Government to redefine Asian urbanism beyond developmentalism or neoliberalism. In this article, we argue that the SUR demonstrates a mixture of post‐developmentalist features and the lingering impact of neoliberal rationalities. Specifically, we problematize SUR's hybrid aspirations for urban competitiveness, improved quality of life and participatory governance by articulating how the pursuit of a globally competitive city conflicts with and overrides other values and how citizen‐centered governance was exploited as an efficient mechanism of neoliberal urbanism.
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