The smart city is a prominent urban development discourse that has been applied to urban policies and programs around the world. To date, there are limited empirical insights on how smart city policies and programs are leading to institutional change in urban local governance. Recent scholarship has mobilized the notion of institutional logics to unpack how the broader smart city discourse shapes local governance landscapes. We contribute to this scholarship by exploring how institutional logics of the smart city come together in contextspecific configurations. To do so, we draw upon empirical findings from an in-depth qualitative case study of Kochi, one of the first 20 cities to win funding from India's Smart Cities Mission. The study findings show how institutional logics of the smart city shape the structure and functioning of the new organisation - the smart city special purpose vehicle (SPV) - set up to implement smart city projects. A hybridisation of corporate and technocratic logics shapes the governance structure of the SPV as a corporate organisation with a company board staffed by licenced professions hired from the private sector. Tensions among collaboration, innovation, and bureaucratic logics shape and limit the functioning of the SPV as various smart city experiments face resistance from bureaucratic logics of the state government actors involved. A hybridisation of branding and market logics connects the city to global smart city trends and enhances the reputation of Kochi through marketing and boosterism. The study provides new insights on how smart city policies and programmes are resulting in institutional changes at the local level.

Smart city control rooms are prominent components of the smart city discourse. They embody a long-standing dream to visualize and manage multiple urban processes in real time through the collation of data flows. Previous research has produced important insights into the design, construction and operation of these facilities. However, this research has largely overlooked the fundamental changes to political and institutional conditions of the city that take place through the implementation of smart city control rooms. In this article, we examine how smart city control rooms are reconfiguring local governance landscapes in India through an in-depth case study of the city of Kochi. We apply the notion of the urban governance dispositif to Kochi's control room in the making to characterize how the facility is co-created alongside a rewiring of the institutions, infrastructures and imaginaries of urban local governance in the city. We demonstrate how, in this process, the smart city control room extends central government control and strengthens central and state government collaboration in urban local governance while legitimizing ICT companies as key actors of urban development. This study illustrates how smart city projects—even when technically stumbling—generate fundamental long-term implications to how cities are understood and managed.

Smart cities represent a dominant urban development discourse advocating for the use of technology and data to enhance urban services, sustainability, and quality of life. This discourse aims to integrate systems like transport, energy, and communication through digital innovation, fostering efficient and livable cities. While early research emphasized the global diffusion of the smart city concept, and later studies examined “actually existing smart cities” in local contexts, there remains limited focus on national smart city programs and their role in shaping urban governance.

National smart city programs materially transform urban infrastructure through technologies such as sensors, mobile apps, and integrated urban control rooms. However, it has been established that these programs not only introduce new technological tools but also reorganize governance by creating new institutions and enabling the rise of technical experts within urban administration. Existing scholarship often isolates these dimensions of technology, expertise, or organization. In this thesis, I argue that they must be explored in their intertwined evolution within national smart city frameworks.

Using theoretical insights from science and technology studies, urban studies, and organization studies, the thesis asks: (1) How do national smart city programs generate new governance dispositifs through the deployment of new technologies? (2) How do national smart city programs introduce new technical experts into urban governance dispositifs? (3) How do new urban governance dispositifs created by national smart city programs result in organizational change in urban local governance?

These questions are addressed through a qualitative case study of India’s Smart Cities Mission, an exemplary case of a national smart city program. The study focuses on the development of integrated command and control centers (ICCCs) in Kochi and Vishakhapatnam, revealing how these control rooms - even as they fall short of achieving integrated and data-mediated governance - facilitate the incursion of the central government into urban local governance where they previous played little direct role while simultaneously enabling the emergence of information and communication technology (ICT) specialists as key urban governance actors. Using the concept of boundary work, the thesis then illustrates how these ICT specialists expand their epistemic authority into urban governance. Focusing on institutional and organizational changes to urban local governance through national smart city programs, the thesis unpacks how institutional logics associated with the smart city hybridize and conflict to shape new local governance organizations called smart city Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) in Kochi. Finally, the implementation of the smart city in Kochi is marked by persistent political contestation—challenging the depoliticized vision projected by smart city narratives.

Overall, the thesis demonstrates how national smart city programs have intertwined technological, political and organizational effects on urban local governance. For those interested in urban governance in India, this research demonstrates the long-term sociotechnical impacts of central government led urban development programs. Finally, for practitioners and policy makers, the thesis provides a deep dive into the impact of the Smart Cities Mission in Kochi.

“Smart cities” representerar ett dominerande diskursivt inslag inomstadsutveckling, där man förespråkar användningen av teknik och data för attförbättra stadens tjänster, hållbarhet och livskvalitet. Målet är att integrerasystem såsom transport, energi och kommunikation genom digital innovation,för att skapa effektiva och attraktiva städer att leva i. Tidig forskning betonadefrämst den globala spridningen av det smarta stadskonceptet, medan senarestudier undersökte ”verkligt existerande smarta städer” i lokala sammanhang.Ändå finns det fortfarande ett begränsat fokus på nationella smartastadsprogram och deras roll i att forma stadsstyrning.

Nationella Smart Cities-program omformar den urbana infrastrukturen på ettmateriellt plan genom teknologier såsom sensorer, mobilappar och integreradeurbana kontrollrum. Det har dock fastställts att dessa program inte baraintroducerar nya teknologiska verktyg, utan även omorganiserarstadsstyrningen genom att skapa nya institutioner och möjliggöra framväxtenav tekniska experter inom den urbana förvaltningen. Existerande forskningtenderar ofta att behandla dessa dimensioner av teknologi, expertis ellerorganisation var för sig. I denna avhandling hävdar jag att de måste utforskas isin sammanvävda utveckling inom nationella smarta stadsramverk.

Med teoretiska insikter från teknik- och vetenskapsstudier (STS), urbanastudier och organisationsstudier ställer avhandlingen följande frågor:

(1) Hur skapar nationella smarta stadsprogram nya styrningsdispositiv genominförandet av ny teknik?

(2) Hur introducerar nationella smarta stadsprogram nya tekniska experter iurbana styrningsdispositiv?

(3) Hur leder nya styrningsdispositiv som skapas av nationella smartastadsprogram till organisatoriska förändringar i den lokala stadsstyrningen?

Dessa frågor besvaras genom en kvalitativ fallstudie av Indiens Smart CitiesMission, som utgör ett exemplariskt fall av ett nationellt smart stadsprogram.Studien fokuserar på utvecklingen av integrerade kommandocentraler (ICCC) iKochi och Vishakhapatnam, och visar hur dessa kontrollrum — även om deinte fullt ut uppnår integrerad och datadriven styrning — möjliggörcentralregeringens inträde i den lokala urbana styrningen, där den tidigarespelat en begränsad direkt roll. Samtidigt möjliggör de även framväxten avexperter inom informations- och kommunikationsteknik (IKT) som centralaaktörer inom den urbana styrningen. Genom att använda begreppet boundarywork (gränsarbete), visar avhandlingen hur dessa IKT-specialister utvidgar sinepistemiska auktoritet inom den urbana styrningen. Genom att fokusera påinstitutionella och organisatoriska förändringar i den lokala urbana styrningengenom nationella smarta stadsprogram, visar avhandlingen hur institutionellalogiker kopplade till smarta städer hybridiseras och kolliderar — vilket formarnya lokala styrningsorganisationer, så kallade special purpose vehicles (SPV)för smarta städer i Kochi. Slutligen präglas implementeringen av den smartastaden i Kochi av ihållande politiska konflikter — som utmanar denavpolitiserade vision som ofta framhålls i det smarta stadsnarrativet.

Sammanfattningsvis visar avhandlingen hur nationella smarta stadsprogramhar sammanflätade teknologiska, politiska och organisatoriska effekter pålokal urban styrning. För dem som är intresserade av urban styrning i Indienvisar forskningen de långsiktiga sociotekniska effekterna av centralregeringensstadsutvecklingsprogram. Slutligen erbjuder avhandlingen en djupgåendeanalys av Smart Cities Missions inverkan i Kochi, med särskild relevans förpraktiker och beslutsfattare.

Smart city projects have been rolled out in various parts of the world, often promising radical urban transformations driven by cutting edge technologies. However, several studies on smart city implementation have noted how these iconic and technology intensive projects have often failed to create the impact they promise. Extending upon emerging scholarship on decision-making in smart city implementation, I use the framework of the garbage can model of organizational choice to unpack key decisions taken around smart city implementation in the city of Kochi in India and the tensions surrounding its flagship integrated command and control centre (ICCC). The case study reveals that the smart city arrives as a top-down directive from the central government where the existing problems of the city are reconfigured to fit nationally envisioned smart city agendas. The implementation of smart city projects is bound up with political tensions between existing local and state organisations and often disrupted by election-cycles and the shuffling of government bureaucrats at the helm of the smart city organisation. The ICCC arrives in Kochi as a solution-looking-for-a-problem as a mandate from the central government. Over time, the increasing distance between the smart city projects and the existing local authorities results in limited integration of the ICCC with urban governance in Kochi. The study shows how smart city projects are embroiled in organizational path dependency and political controversies contrary to the apolitical and rational technical fixes promised in smart city vision documents.

In response to the changing landscape of planning actors, planning literatures are exploring the implications that the extended presence of consultants have on planning processes. From relying on assumptions about “the primacy of public planners and/or definitions of a public interest” (Raco, 2018: 124), recent attention to planning consultants complicates presumptions about their expanded presence as singlehandedly implying a privatization of urban planning (Inch et al., 2023; Sturzaker and Hickman, 2023). In this paper, we take cue on these works by adding complexity and nuance to the role that planning consultants are playing in planning processes. Through an understanding of expertise as emergent, performed and thus in constant flux (Björkman and Harris, 2018), we ask: how are planning consultants conceiving of their expertise, and how do they situate their expertise in relation to other planning actors?

This chapter investigates how genomic practices can reinforce population thinking beyond the lab, looking particularly at how social divisions are essentialised as biological categories in India. The case chosen is the media discourse surrounding DNA recovered from skeletons belonging to the Indus Valley Civilisation, a sophisticated urban civilisation that flourished in the North West of the Indian Subcontinent between 3300 and 1300 BCE. Debates in the Indian media revolve around the question of indigeneity and the idea of an unbroken lineage of Hindus versus invaders and colonisers. These theorisations of a genetic re-inscription of population groups are bolstered by archaeological evidence and linguistic theories, which have historically resulted in politically charged debates. Through an analysis of 31 articles published in seven Indian newspapers and magazines, the chapter examines ways in which genetic evidence has been mobilised to argue for either an ‘Aryan Migration Theory’ or an indigenous Vedic culture while normatively classifying populations as ‘indigenous’, ‘Aryan’, ‘Dravidian’, ‘upper-caste’, among others. It argues that the popularisation of biomedical ideas of race poses potentially dangerous consequences for India, as ancient DNA testing is used to make arguments against those who ‘do not belong’ and as justification for various forms of political repression.

The smart city is a prominent urban development discourse that has been applied to urban policies and programs around the world. To date, there are limited empirical insights on how smart city policies and programs are leading to institutional change in urban local governance. Recent scholarship has mobilized the notion of institutional logics to unpack how the broader smart city discourse shapes local governance landscapes. We contribute to this scholarship by exploring how institutional logics of the smart city come together in context-specific configurations. To do so, we draw upon empirical findings from an in-depth qualitative case study of Kochi, one of the first 20 cities to win funding from India’s Smart Cities Mission. The study findings show how institutional logics of the smart city shape the structure and functioning of the new organisation – the smart city special purpose vehicle (SPV) - set up to implement smart city projects. A hybridisation of corporate and technocratic logics shapes the governance structure of the SPV as a corporate organisation with a company board staffed by licenced professions hired from the private sector. Tensions among collaboration, innovation, and bureaucratic logics shape and limit the functioning of the SPV as various smart city experiments face resistance from bureaucratic logics of the state government actors involved.  A hybridisation of branding and market logics connects the city to global smart city trends and enhances the reputation of Kochi through marketing and boosterism. 

Smart city control rooms are prominent components of the smart city discourse. They embody a longstanding dream to visualize and manage multiple urban processes in real-time through the collation of dataflows. Previous research has produced important insights into the design, construction and operation of these facilities. However, this research has largely overlooked the fundamental changes to political and institutional conditions of the city that take place through the implementation of smart city control rooms. In this article, we examine how smart city control rooms are reconfiguring local governance landscapes in India through an in-depth case study of the city of Kochi. We apply the notion of the urban governance dispositif to Kochi’s control room in-the-making to characterize how the facility is co-created alongside a rewiring of the institutions, infrastructures, and imaginaries of urban local governance in the city. We demonstrate how, in this process, the smart city control room extends central government control and strengthens central and state government collaboration in urban local governance while legitimizing ICT companies as key actors of urban development. This study illustrates how smart city projects – even when technically stumbling – generate fundamental long-term implications to how cities are understood and managed.