Transforming the smart city ideal from the margins: everyday regimes of labour and governance

This paper explores the interface between global circulations and local articulations of smart city plans and technological ideals in emerging urban contexts. Drawing illustrative cases from Nairobi’s urban margins, I examine everyday regimes of labour and governance where local actors translate, recreate and transform smart city initiatives based on embedded practices, processes and institutions. I argue that while smart city plans aim to impose techno-dreams on urban contexts, informal actors, often marginal to city planning, localise and adapt these plans, sometimes in unforeseen ways. This, I contend, highlights incompleteness as a key feature of urban technological systems in the making.