Principal Investigator: Byron Miller (University of Calgary)
Co-investigators from York University: Teresa Abbruzzese (Social Science), Linda Peake (EUC), Zachary Spicer (SPPA), Natasha Tusikov (Social Science)
This three-year (2020-2023) SSHRC Partnership Development Grant-funded research project advances interdisciplinary understandings of the societal implications of diverse smart city initiatives around the world. Our global comparative research program focuses on smart city initiatives in seven cities: Toronto, Calgary, Stockholm, Barcelona, Singapore, Taipei, and Seoul. Key research questions across the comparative case studies include the objectives of smart city initiatives, who their initiators are, social coordination logics of the initiatives, how they are legitimized, and the scales at which they are organized. Insights from this research will provide valuable guidance for future smart city initiatives, helping to identify approaches through which smart city initiatives foster more open, participatory, just, and sustainable forms of urban development and organization, as well as approaches that are socially and environmentally ill-advised.