Miss Beca L Phillips

My doctoral research examines the concept of the smart city, in practice. Smart cities seek to be a techno-managerial panacea to sustainability’s tripartite vision of environmental, social and economic harmony. The smart city concept demonstrates logics emblematic of dominant policy approaches to sustainable development, and of wider instrumentalist ways of knowing and doing. An alternative consideration of the everydayness of these logics and of practical skills and wisdom (phronesis), draws attention to social practices and the intelligibilities of subjects within the smart city. A phronetic research approach could contribute richer understandings and contextualisations of how the smart city concept is promoted, produced and translated by smart city actors and how the practices and goals of sustainability are affected as a result.