The Smart Enough City

Ben Green's 2019 argument that cities should use technology as a tool for democratic and equitable ends rather than treat it as the goal, with cases of smart-city projects gone wrong and alternatives.

Green warns against seeing the city only through technology. Cities that chase that view, he argues, end up with self-driving cars that push pedestrians out of downtown, civic engagement reduced to an app, policing algorithms that launder old biases and public space under surveillance, while still appearing smart. Against this he sets a "smart enough" city that takes technology as one powerful tool among others for being livable, democratic, just, responsible and innovative, and gives examples of both kinds.

Urban digital twins are sold with the same promises as the smart city, and inherit the same failure modes. Green's book is the short, concrete account of those failures and of what it looks like to put the technology in service of the city's actual goals.

Cover via Open Library.