Placing the smart city: innovation and inclusive urban development

Abstract

In this context, one of the central problems for the ruling party has been that so much of its transformative urban policy has been focused on reshaping the urban edges of South Africa cities, where new housing estates, malls and gated communities have been built without sufficient consideration of change in the urban cores of the old settler cities. In this regard, the government's policies, like those promoted by its radical African opponents, may paradoxically be viewed as having refused engagement with the actual histories of these cities in so far as they have been shaped by white settler colonialism. Against this background, the smart city programme is yet another intervention that decentres the South African city and pushes development out to the edges. One of the central propositions of this collection of essays is to consider how former settler cities might be recentred and the contribution that smart city development can make to this process.