Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

10-2021

Abstract

This paper explores the case study of the ASEAN Smart Cities Network (ASCN) to uncover the motivations and potential challenges associated with technocratic regionalism, by which we mean technology-driven forms of regional integration and consolidation. In the case of the ASCN, technocratic regionalism is used to spur urban development through the rollout of smart city plans, policies and projects across Southeast Asia. As such, it is a regional strategy designed to scale smartness, and thus deprovincialise the city by embedding it within transnational flows of capital, ideas and expertise. At the same time, however, already existing urban issues have the potential to re-provincialise the city. The vagaries of local contexts, structures of governance and urban cultures complicate processes of scalar ascendency and thus foreground the paradox of (de)provincialisation. We identify three challenges – divergent infrastructural developments, vertical and horizontal (non-)integration, and the need to reconcile (in)formal spaces of the “smart” city – that underpin the translational politics of technocratic regionalism, and which are likely to compromise the efficacy and success of the ASCN.

Keywords

Smart cities, scaling smartness, technocratic regionalism, ASCN, Southeast Asia

Discipline

Asian Studies | Urban Studies and Planning

Research Areas

Humanities

Publication

Cities

Volume

117

First Page

1

Last Page

8

ISSN

0264-2751

Identifier

10.1016/j.cities.2021.103326

Publisher

Elsevier

Embargo Period

7-6-2021

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2021.103326

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