Smart cities –
integration junctions for
networked urban
infrastructures?
Dr. Ralitsa Hiteva
Sussex Energy Group, SPRU, University of Sussex
2nd March 2015
Networked infrastructure
• What is infrastructure?
• Why does infrastructure matter?
• How does infrastructure contribute to sustainability?
Networked infrastructures:
• made possible an unprecedented degree of socio-technological change,
• serve as “transmission belts” for national policies
• unevenlybind spaces together across cities, regions, nations, and international
boundaries, creating in the processspecific material and social dynamics within
and between these spaces(Amin and Graham1998)
• are said to interconnect (parts of) these spaces and mediate the multiple
connections and disconnections within and between them (Graham and Marvin,
2001).
• embody “congealed social interests”, (Bijker, 1993) and can be used by institutions,
companiesand individualsto extend their influence in time and spaces beyond the
“here” and “now” (Curry, 1998,) and maintain specific “socio-technical geometries
of power” ( Massey, 1993).
Infrastructure interdependencies
Infrastructure interdependencies
• Are responsible for a range of growing risks (resilience,
uninterrupted supply of services), uncertainties (achieving
long terms targets) and opportunities (low carbon living)
• Growing interdependencies and complexity (due to
liberalisation and increasingly wide range of stakeholder
groups involved in negotiating the trade-offs between
multiple objectives)
– partly due to growing importance of the electricity and ICT sectors
for the management of other sectors , and shared objectives of
environmental protection.
HOWEVER, Infrastructure systems can be locked into silo-based
governance arrangements, designed so that multiple regulating
actors operate at different levels within each sector
Socio-technical regimes,
networks and transitions
• Infrastructure sectors as socio-technical regimes
• A socio-technical regime comprises the network of actors and social
groups; the formal, cognitive, and normative rules that guide the
activity of actors; as well as the material and technical artefacts and
infrastructures (Geels 2006).
• In socio-technical regimes technical systems are embedded within
the wider societal context and constitute a ‘seamless web’ of
interaction between technical and non-technical components.
• Complementarity between ICT, electricity and transport regimes has
intensified in recent times because of environmental (climate
change), economic (oil prices and ICT markets) and cultural
(value/behaviour change) pressures; as well as the proliferation of
‘binding’ concepts, such as smart grids; smart cities, and low
carbon vehicles (Raven, 2007).
Low Carbon Transitions
The multitude of intentional changes to the material and policy
landscapes of energy which aim to lower the amount of carbon
dioxide emissions released in the atmosphere as a result from the
processes of energy productions, transmission, distribution and use
The top down approach
• A rapid systemic change, along a well marked pathway
• Transitions are directed and purposeful
The bottom up approach
• A local issue addressed through community mobilization
“…. understanding urban transitions, and their politics, requires
engagement with a kaleidoscope of plural socio-technical regimes
that go to make up the urban, and in which climate change
experiments provide critical junctures through which new
configurations are assembled, mobilized, normalized and
contested.” (Bulkeley et al, 2013)
Unpacking the “urban”
• Marginal interest in the urban by literatures on technological
innovations and system change
• Cities regarded as simply locations across which transition dynamics play
out;
• Cities (city governments) as an actor that leads transitions;
• Cities as theatre for action, providing spaces for innovation that can act
as seedbeds for transitions – innovation junctions
• The urban as a space for experimentation that can be scaled
up so as to effect wider system change
• Socio-technical transformation requires the generation of
spaces of authority through which multiple elements technologies, resources, norms, beliefs – are enrolled and
reassembled.
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What’s (in) a smart city?
Citizens (smart citizens) and businesses at the core
Access to open data –City Datastore
Technical capability
Innovation (R&D, social innovation)
eGovernment services
brought together through networks
• To better serve citizens and business needs
• To offer a “smarter” city experience for all
• Cities as real-time systems
• Internet of Things - the networked connection between
everyday objects
One possible definition and
vision of smart cities
“A smart city is one in which the seams and structures of the
various urban systems are made clear, simple, responsive and
even malleable via contemporary technology and design.
Citizens are not only engaged and informed in the relationship
between their activities, their neighbourhoods, and the wider
urban ecosystems, but are actively encouraged to see the city
itself as something they can collectively tune, such that it is
efficient, interactive, engaging, adaptive and flexible, as opposed
to the inflexible, monofunctional and monolithic structures of
many 20th century cities”
(Arup, 2010)
The case study:
electricity, ICT and EVs in the UK
• ICT – the whole of the networks, systems and artefacts which enable the
transmission, receipt, capture, storage and manipulation of voice and data
traffic on and across electronic devices (Horrocks et al, 2010).
• Smart meters - a system that provides real-time information to consumers
on energy use, allows remote meter reading and limited remote control
(such as disconnection of the supply) and can transmit price signals to
consumers indicating when the cheaper tariff is available.
• Smart grids - are based on a general two-way flow of electricity and
information based on arrangements of metering systems and sensors which
measure and control energy flow from energy supplier to the customers in
order to optimize and adjust energy production and consumption in a
limited area and avoiding energy transmission over long distances.
• Electric vehicles (EVs) – are powered by an electric motor instead of a
gasoline engine.
Topography of a smart grid
A multi-level effort
At national level:
• A cross-departmental Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV)
• A national programme for installing 47 million smart meters by 2020
• The Low Carbon Vehicles Innovation Platform
• Smart Grid Forum
• The Low Carbon Network Fund.
At EU level:
• The European Electricity Grid Initiative
• Smart Grid Task Force
• EU RES Directives 2009/2007
At urban level:
• The London Electric Vehicle Partnership
• Pilot and demonstration projects
• Urban transport, company and Local Authorities’ fleets.
However…
• ICT is layered on top of existing electrical infrastructure, and
the two infrastructures are planned almost independently.
• Smart grid development is limited to particular areas of
integration of ICT and electricity distribution, and is focused
on pilots
• The use of EVs is still limited and quite geographically
restricted to “smart” cities and neighborhoods (London,
Manchester, Sheffield, Brighton)
• What about open data and privacy?
• Who benefits from smart cities? Is it citizens?
R.Hiteva@sussex.ac.uk