The Hard/Soft Dichotomies in Smart Cities: Comparison
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Please note this is a comparison between Version 2 by Conner Chen and Version 3 by Mary J. Thornbush.

Hard and soft approaches to smart cities have been a contributedommon language in academic and policy literature, lending to the compartmentalizatioorigin of the smart city concept itself. The binary of the hard (, with the original technocratic) and soft (societal) focus now increasingly reframed as “citizen-centric”.  The binary of the hard and soft is also often presented as a choice of pathways in the development of smart cities. This conceptualization has developed, however, with the original technocratic focus now increasingly reframed as “citizen-centric.”

  • city strategies
  • digital governance
  • digital spaces
  • smart city
C

1. Introduction

The idea of the “smart city” ies around the world have embrace the "smart city" and launched initiatives to place people amid evolving piecemeal strategies. Central to such smart-city programs are digitization and developments in Information and s bringing a number of key and disruptive innovations into the operation of urban life, affecting social dynamics, governance, and markets. Developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the Internet of Things (IoT) make it possible to digitally connect myriads of devices, sensors, actuators, and smartphones and to simultaneously collect Big Data for analyzing, managing, and controlling the ever-increasing number of aspects of urban life. The uninterrupted high-resolution flow of users’ data, real-time responses to it, and the customization of services to tailor people’s individual needs, desires, and trajectories bring the promise of combined efficiency, integration, transparency, inclusiveness, and participation. Consequently, mmunication Technologies (ICT), which are part of "hard" approaches in a any cities around the world have launched smart city initiatives, often supported by strategic city-level programs. Discursively, these strategies “place people at the center.” Meanwhile, at the core of the emergence of the smart city remain digitalization and ICT. This has produced the dichotomist framework. Among suchexpression of “hard” and “soft” approaches areto the smart city (e.g., [1][2]), where “hard” refers to ICT-centered applications as well as nd physical infrastructure, whereas soft approachess such as buildings, energy grids, natural resources, water and waste management, mobility, and logistics, while “soft” points to innovations, education, culture, social inclusion, and governance. Respectively, they represent a This discursive dichotomy referred to as of “hard” and “soft” may also appear in other forms such as “technical or ” or “social parts” or as part of an integrated (systems) approach [3]. The binary of nature of unintegrated approaches forces pathway choices in the hard and soft is also often presented as a choice of pathways in the development of smart cities. It has become rare that a smart city vision does not include a form of a pie diagram plotting a circle in the middle that reads “smart city” and is surrounded by sectors for “smart people”, “smart living”, “smart economy”, “smart government”, “smart environment”, and “smart city development. These can be framed as sectors frequently employed to encapsulate the smart city (e.g., fragmented into peopmobility” and their variations. This is supposed to demonstrate an integrated approach, where inevitably, the “soft” approach dominates. However, it is often the case that soft domains are emphasized in a discursive way to justify the rationale for the deployment of smart cities, but that specific areas of real-life smart city application shift the emphasis back to the hard domains such as dataization, its enabling infrastructure, and the deployment of various ICT-based technological solutions. Acknowledging this as a strategy to promulgate technological and instrumentalist agendas in the name of social agendas and citizen empowerment [4], we, nevertheless, living, economyargue that this is more than a discursive diversion. What is happening is rather symptomatic of the ever-deepening interpenetration and hybridization of technical, government, environment, mobility). However, thisance, and sociocultural elements in an increasingly digitalized society, where the dichotomy of technology versus society is becoming inincreasingly difficult to sustain in practice and can pose, indeed, becomes an epistemological obstruction to saddressing the smart city as an analytical category.

2. The Politics of Hard/Soft Dichotomies

Hard and soft approachevelopment, both conceptually and practically. Ultimately, technical approachess to smart cities have been a common language in academic and policy literature, lending to the origin of the smart city concept itself, with the original technocratic focus now increasingly reframed as “citizen-centric” (i.e., [4]). wWill need to be justified based on their societal purpose in th ICT being central to the smart city, the concept has also drawn from other “hard” sectors such as low-energy buildings, transportation systems, or automation (cf. [5][6][7]). Howexpver, thensive real-world applications smart city has quickly developed a dialogue with longer-standing principles of sustainable cities [8]. This lenads to a broader and varied engagement with smart cities necessarily, now involving stthe notions of multiple stakeholders, participation, citizens, and soft/ other soft/social aspects [9]. MLetaifa [10], fore realistically is aexample, discusses the importance of approaching smart cities as complex innovation ecosystems approach thatwith integratesd socioeconomic, environmental, culturcological, and political sub-systems withinhile adopting a sustainability framapproach. Nevework. Amid thieless, there remain political tensions between hthe hard and soft pathways to achieving the smart city. Ithe smart city remain. Many authors are cautious about imbalances exist inwhen the smart city agendas that are is dominated by digital technology, with. They question whether so-called smart solutions are all about a technological pushes driven by high-tech corporations a(e.g., [11][12][13][14]). This brindgs forth the entrepreneurial stimulation of smart development by the ICT industries and markets associated with their products and services [15][16]. CDiscursively at least, citizen engagement needs to beand the idea that technology is leveraged withto achieve greater social, environmental, and economic—or overall sustainability inputs as its—needs become the currency of the smart city. Cities like Barcelona are multisuch as Barcelona have adopted an integrated architecture based on sensors, code, and the Internet—all in the name of developing networked habitats and distributive management as part of a “multi-scalar andcity” empowering theirits citizens [17]. Admiring Barcelona’s places where terecent attempt to re-envisage the smart city around “technological sovereignty” and the notion that technology is should be oriented to serve local residents as technology “commons”, Refs. Avo[4][18] argue that elsewhere “cidting top-down approaches to smart city development could promote inclusivenezen-centric” roles are narrowly based on predefined choices over market-led solutions (citizens as users or consumers), and not so much in proactive social innovation or political citizenship. They [18] also argue that this (e.g., community-led initiatiapproach is common for EU institutions, and, despite all the “citizen-focused” discourse, smart urbanism remains rooted in instrumental and paternalistic practices. Many authors have s) and helpimilarly questioned the extent of inclusiveness of smart interventions regardless of their capacity to boost sustainability while spurringand spur economic growth, although not through in cities. Some call the smart city a “hollow signifier” built upon elitist control that only renders further exclusions and injustices, triggering commodification amid a weak economy [19][20]. This perspective consid teers smart city solutions as neoliberal “techno-environmental fixes. T” that involve thus,e social responsibility, politicsdepoliticization of city governance and the outsourcing of public services to money-grabbing initiatives by technology funders, utility, and eICT companies [14][17][21]. What emerges hicsere is key to the issue of governing technological hardware and infrastructure and software become ance. If the “soft” strategy is chosen, sustaining it in practice may be problematic given the strong impulses for marketization via digitalization more aligned with the “hard” strategy offered by technology proponents. Yet, an important considextension from that is the deliberations in a multifaceted (inclusive) approach. A systems thinking approach - rather than other-replacing - is re of whether it is still meaningful to make the dichotomist distinction between the “hard” and “soft” domains or whether it is necessary to accept their co-production (if not blurred meanings). That would require acknowledging both the changing nature (digitalization) of society and the political nature of technology and, consequently, the social responsibility, politics, and ethics of governing technological hardware, software, and other infrastructure. The multifacevant to consider integration and the complexity of the systemted nature of smart cities, therefore, necessitates a different approach that is more in line with systems thinking, where hard and soft domains are co-occurrent and combined in their operation rather than other-replacing.

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