European Smart City Politics - Conception, Perception and Lived Experience in the cases of the EU, Amsterdam and Barcelona

Critical smart cities literature has called for further research on the discursive and material realities of smart cities (Kitchin, 2015) in order to politicise them as a research topic under a right to the smart city framework (Kitchin et al., 2018). Towards this research agenda, this thesis develops an integrated discursive-material framework for understanding the ‘smart city’. The understanding of the material component highly relies on Henri Lefebvre’s (1974) theory of the production space, and his triad model of socio-spatial processes: conceived space, perceived space; and lived space. The discursive component relies on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s (1985) theory of hegemony, with however the incorporation of Doreen Massey’s (1995; 2005) constructive critique on the spatial understanding of politics that has influenced Mouffe’s (2013a; 2013b) later work on the politics of agonism. Upon its development, the integrated framework is operationalised to approach European spatial politics case studying the regional level of the EU and the city levels of Amsterdam and Barcelona. The analysis of the three case studies is performed through the political discourse analysis of documents and websites and ethnography in place of relevant events. Thereof, the findings of this thesis are gathered into a conceptual model for understanding the discursive-material realities of smart cities that suggests four non-mutually exclusive smart cities imaginaries currently at play: (a) the corporate smart city; (b) the panopticon smart city; (c) the smart city mediator and (d) the empowering smart city. Finally, this thesis recommends that future scholarship further engages with the conceptualisation of technology as space, the development of a radical understanding of citizenship towards the imagination a right to the smart city framework and activist methodologies towards its realisation.