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Are smart cities truly sustainable? Professor Marcus Foth debunks the technocentric illusion that risks accelerating ecocide.
Today ecological crisis knocks on the doors of our metropolises, and it does so disguised as a technological promise. Thus, if the first historic appeals from the international scientific community had warned us of the collision course between humanity and the biosphere, the new cries of alarm turn the spotlight on a contemporary paradox: the illusion that an algorithm can save the planet. The model of the Smart Cities, unmasked not as a solution, but as a potential accomplice to global ecocide.
Concerned Scientists' "Warnings to Humanity"
The first, historical, World Scientists' Warning to Humanity It was published in 1992 with the signatures of around 1.700 scientists, including the majority of the then living Nobel Prize winners in science. Henry Kendall, the promoter of the initiative, was himself a Nobel Prize winner for physics in 1990. In that dense and dramatic document, scientists warned humanity of an imminent danger: human beings and the natural world are on a collision course, and if we do not radically change our approach to life we risk seriously compromise the future of the planet.
Back then, over thirty years ago, scientists identified several critical issues, including the ozone hole, contamination and depletion of water resources, the destruction of marine ecosystems, and climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
25 years after the first appeal, the ecologist William J. Ripple, along with several co-authors, decided to take stock. The result, published in the journal BioScience, had a colossal impact, garnering the signatures of over 15.000 scientists from 184 countries. The content of this second warning It seems obvious today: with the exception of the ozone hole, the problems identified in the 1992 document have dramatically worsened. The original appeal was never taken seriously.
Thus, the Union of Concerned Scientists has begun to publish more specific articles, focusing on particular ecosystems and phenomena, from the disappearance of insects to the loss of biodiversity in freshwater. These Narrow-focused Scientists' Warnings they also touch on sociology, economics and human behaviour, more recently arriving at tackling issues such as smart cities and urban technologies.
A scientist's warning about smart cities
The professor's critical essay Marcus Foth from Queensland University of Technology, published this year in the journal Journal of Urban Technology, was born as a contribution to the international series of articles Narrow-focused, and aims to examine Smart Cities and urban technologies in the context of the environmental crisis plaguing the planet. The starting point is clear:
While digital technologies offer new tools for managing urban systems, prevailing approaches often remain focused exclusively on efficiency and optimization. This risks neglecting the broader ecological and ethical dimensions of urban development.
According to Foth, it is necessary rethinking the role of smart cities in promoting more desirable futures for humans and the planet, and to do so requires a radical paradigm shift that goes beyond efficiency-oriented models as well as the anthropocentric, or human-centered, approaches so fashionable in urban planning theory.
According to Foth, in fact,
“Smart cities’ sustainability claims are, at best, mere greenwashing and, at worst, even complicit in contributing to planetary ecocide.”
The concern, then, is that the smart cities agenda, if left unchecked, will distract us from implementing three urgent paradigm shifts necessary for truly sustainable cities. But how can smart cities contribute to the climate crisis? Doesn't this contradict everything we know about sustainability-oriented urban technologies?
Do Smart Cities Contribute to Ecocide?
On paper, a Smart City uses IoT sensor networks for monitoring and environmental management, aims to integrate renewable energies such as wind and solar and improve urban planning and design through urban informatics and digital twins that enable a data-driven decision making. Yet, this will not necessarily lead to sustainable cities:
“Their heavy reliance on technocentrism, their entrenchment in for-profit, neoliberal commercial market economies, and their inability to attune to the complex interconnections with natural ecosystems mean that most smart city implementations contribute to accelerating, rather than halting and preventing, planetary ecocide.”
we read in the article.
To demonstrate his thesis, the author addresses the relationships between Smart Cities and three crucial aspects of their current definition: theefficiency, the urban science and the concept of human-centered designThe idea of efficiency is a clear example of the risk outlined by Foth: besides the fact that it could have unintended consequences, such as the reduction of opportunities for chance encounters and a general lack of innovation, the efficiency advocated by technology vendors cannot escape the neoliberal growth expectations that drive human consumption patterns in cities. Ultimately, this cannot translate into a reduction in human impact on the planet.
Beyond urban science and the centrality of man
Other concepts to be questioned, according to Foth, are those of urban science and human-centered design (human-centered). The idea of applying computational, data-driven, and scientific methods to understand, model, and improve urban systems certainly has positive roots, but it faces systemic limitations, “as the questionable belief that instrumental rationality, quantitative methods and technological automation can solve all the problems of the cities".
The use of digital twins for environmental monitoring, for example, could lead decision makers to overly rely on technological solutions, such as city dashboards, without fully understanding the complex dynamics of urban habitats and natural ecosystems, and sidelining key forms of knowledge such as qualitative research.
As for the human-centered design, Foth points out two particularly problematic areas: the first is the risk of a mere theatrical and symbolic representation of the community's involvement in the application of participatory and co-design methods; the second is the need to address the very concept of “human-centered”, which often assumes that human interests and needs take precedence over all other species and the environment, neglecting the interconnectedness of urban ecosystems and downplaying the importance of coexistence with non-human beings. An approach “More-than-Human”, capable of recognizing the different entities that contribute to urban ecosystems, “has the potential to promote true sustainability, foster environmental justice, and create urban environments that prioritize the well-being of both humans and other organisms".
The three paradigms to overcome for truly sustainable smart cities
Today, cities are at a crossroads, and the interests of many players in industry and government, explains Foth, “they push them to maintain the status quo in order to continue with their neoliberal aspirations of growth and profit”. Therefore, the sustainability solutions proposed are often purely symbolic, or place the blame on citizens and their consumer choices.
The author then proposes three crucial changes which require our full attention and a determined commitment:
- Moving beyond efficiency-oriented models to explore positive approaches for nature and climate, which require systemic reforms in regulatory, economic, and governance frameworks. Guiding this transition are relational ethics and the principles of custodial ethics typical of the governance systems of Australian Indigenous societies, which push us to "contemplate the development of cities over the next 10.000 years, with the goal of humans designing and inhabiting cities as good ancestors for future generations, both human and non-human";
- Reconciling positivist urban science with constructivist epistemologies in urban studies, with the aim of strengthening the value of local and indigenous knowledge in creating more inclusive, just, and context-sensitive urban governance;
- Moving from an anthropocentric design to a design that considers everything that is fundamental “more than human” for holistic urban sustainability. A posthuman paradigm, the author emphasizes, pushes us to actively contribute to the care, management, and well-being of ecosystems, biodiversity, and the planet.
“The path to truly smart and sustainable cities requires not only technological prowess, but also a profound shift in mindset, recognizing the interconnectedness of all elements of the urban ecosystem and aspiring to create cities that will thrive for generations to come.”,
concludes Foth.
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