The Smart City Trap (opens in new tab)

The pitch is always the same. A gleaming control room, banks of screens flickering with real-time data, algorithms humming away beneath the surface, optimising traffic flow, predicting crime, routing ambulances, trimming energy waste. The smart city, we are told, will be cleaner, safer, faster, and more efficient. It will save money. It will save lives. And increasingly, as municipal budgets tighten and technology vendors sharpen their sales decks, the conversation has narrowed to a single qu...