Cities of Otherness: the smart city as a heterotopia

Abstract

This paper provides an exploratory dimension to the current smart city discussion by regarding the smart city as a heterotopia space – a space of otherness. By adopting a Foucauldian approach, this paper briefly describes the ‘discursive formation’ of the smart city by analysing its ‘surfaces of emergence’, ‘authorities of delimitation’, and ‘grids of specification’, in order to capture the smart city discourse trajectory. It then focuses on analysing the smart city as a heterotopia space by applying Foucault’s six principles of heterotopias to the data gathered through twenty-seven ethnographic interviews with the smart city experts. In so doing, the paper intends to explore the possible implications for design – and ‘design’ in its widest sense – in the smart city context.