Till F Paasche

Smart cities as corporate storytelling

On 4 November 2011, the trademark ‘smarter cities’ was officially registered as belonging to IBM. This was an important milestone in a struggle between IT companies over visibility and legitimacy in the smart city market. Drawing on actor-network theory and critical planning theory, the paper analyzes IBMs smarter city campaign and finds it to be storytelling, aimed at making the company an ‘obligatory passage point’ in the implementation of urban technologies. Our argument unfolds in three parts. We first trace the emergence of the term ‘smart city’ in the public sphere. Secondly, we show that IBMs influential story about smart cities is far from novel but rather mobilizes and revisits two long-standing tropes: systems thinking and utopianism. Finally, we conclude, first by addressing two critical questions raised by this discourse: technocratic reductionism and the introduction of new moral imperatives in urban management; and second, by calling for the crafting of alternative smart city stories.

Michel Foucault and the Smart City: Power Dynamics Inherent in Contemporary Governing through Code

Drawing upon Michel Foucaults approach to power and governmentality, this paper explores the internal logics and dynamics of software-mediated techniques used to regulate and manage urban systems. Our key questions are as follows: what power and regulatory dynamics do contemporary smart-city initiatives imply? And how do smart information technologies intervene in the governing of everyday life? Building on the Foucauldian distinction between apparatuses of discipline and apparatuses of security, the paper approaches these questions on three broad levels, namely: how contemporary ‘governing through code’ relates to its referent object (referentiality axis), to normalisation (normativity axis), and to space (spatiality axis). Empirically, the paper investigates two high-profile pilot projects in Switzerland in the field of smart electricity management, aimed at (1) the assessment of customer needs and behaviours with regard to novel smart metering solutions (iSMART), and (2) the elaboration of novel IT solutions in the field of smart electricity grids for optimised load management (Flexlast).

Territorial Tactics: The Socio-spatial Significance of Private Policing Strategies in Cape Town

This paper analyses the policing strategies of private security companies operating in urban space. An existing literature has considered the variety of ways that territory becomes of fundamental importance in the work of public police forces. However, this paper examines territory in the context of private security companies. Drawing on empirical research in Cape Town, it examines how demarcated territories become key subjects in private policing. Private security companies are responsible for a relatively small section of the city, while in contrast the public police ultimately have to see city space as a whole. Hence, private policing strategy becomes one of displacement, especially of so-called undesirables yielding a patchworked public space associated with private enclaves of consumption. The conclusions signal the historical resonances and comparative implications of these political–legal–security dynamics.

Transecting Security and Space in Phnom Penh

Our paper examines everyday interactions of money, power, and security in Cambodias capital city of Phnom Penh, informed by a series of transects and interviews. When Phnom Penh hosted the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in April 2012, Prime Minister Hun Sen declared that “Cambodia is not for sale” in an angry exchange with journalists who had quizzed him about Chinas influence. However, the sale and enclosure of Cambodian land and property have yielded both profit and tensions. These are connected with the meanings and operation of security. The most powerful ‘security’ agency in Phnom Penh is neither wholly ‘public’ nor fully ‘private’, but hybrid; where public police and military personnnel and their equipment are purchased. We argue that this is symptomatic of circulation/operation of state/capital in Cambodia.

Transecting security and space in Kurdistan, Iraq

Departing from most coverage of Iraq, which tends to be focused on insecurity, this paper is about securities; drawing on research in the provinces of Iraq administered by the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). In the last decade, the KRG’s territory has experienced very few significant bomb attacks. These were directed against KRG personnel, rather than targeting civilians per se, as so frequently happens elsewhere in Iraq. In contrast, the KRG has enjoyed relative security, enabling fast development. To the southwest however, there is a complex territorial contest between the Peshmerga (armed forces of the KRG), the forces of the central government of Iraq and Islamic State ( al-Dawlah al-IslA mA«yah – frequently called ISIS or ISIL in English) whose insurgent territory spans the Iraq–Syria border. To the northeast, the Partiya KarkerAan Kurdistan (PKK), who have contested the Turkish state since the mid-1980s, now control swathes of territory. Transecting these spaces, the paper develops a grounded study of how Kurdish security forces operate. While insecurity continues in the disputed territories and the Partiya KarkerAan Kurdistan governs the zone along the Turkish border, the security forces of the KRG utilize very direct forms of surveillance and control. Negotiating these, our paper traverses spaces of security, sovereignty and (disputed) territory.

Kurdistan Regional Government–Turkish energy relations: a complex partnership

We analyze the Kurdish Regional Government’s (KRG’s) fast developing energy relationship with Turkey, its implications for Turkey’s energy security and, ultimately, regional security in general. Being landlocked, commentators tend to picture the KRG as a highly dependent entity, desperate to export its oil and gas through Turkey. While it is true that currently the KRG has no real alternative export routes other than Turkey, we argue that the energy relationship between the two is more complex than Turkey simply agreeing to this proposal as part of its energy diversification project. For Turkey, the dealings with the KRG present the next best thing to having its own oil and gas fields; high levels of control, partial ownership, and close proximity are all required by the country that is increasingly eking out its position as a regional patron. A further strong incentive for Turkey to develop this energy relationship is new opportunities to approach some of the country’s oldest and newest threats, the conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the developing PKK- influenced Kurdish movement in a fragmenting Syria.

Surveillance and Privacy, Geography of

Surveillance and privacy are mutually exclusive: if one increases, the other decreases. After defining these terms and their relation to each other, this article introduces key concepts in the field of surveillance studies, followed by a discussion of classical forms of surveillance and privacy invasion, namely, forms of visual surveillance. The second half of the article departs from the surveillance of individuals to new technological trends that represent new challenges to privacy concerns and the social sorting of populations through software algorithms.

Fighting Falcons over northern Iraq: a Kurdish perspective on F-16 fighters and regional security

America plans to sell F-16 fighters to Iraq’s central government in Baghdad, a step that evokes existential fears amongst many of the country’s Kurds who live in the autonomous Kurdistan region given the integral part the jets of Saddam’s air force played in the genocide against the Kurdish minority during the 1980s. The F-16s would indeed shift the currently relatively stable balance of power in favour of the central government especially in the light of the ongoing quarrels between the Kurds and Baghdad over oil and territory. Inspired by conversations with Kurdish officials and military, this observation points out that there already are F-16s in the Iraqi skies, Turkish ones who operate against the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). However, it should be remembered that with their geopolitically important multimillion dollar investments in Kurdistan, Turkey is interested in a strong Kurdish region. Thus, the armament of Baghdad could possibly result in an ever deepening Kurdish–Turkish relationship beyond economy. Jets that were used against one Kurdish group, the PKK, could indeed become a symbol of military patronage for the autonomous Kurdistan region.