Smart city discourse as place-making boundary experience in Aalborg East: Paper for the 45th Annual Meeting of the Urban Affairs Association. Transnationalism from Above and Below: The Dynamics of Place-making in the Global City, Miami, Florida, April 8-11, 2015

Lars A. Engberg

Publikation: Konferencebidrag uden forlag/tidsskriftPaper uden forlag/tidsskriftRådgivning

Abstract


In 2013 the newly elected mayor in the Danish city of Aalborg campaigned to make the Aalborg East district a new ‘test field’ for smart city solutions and projects. Together with Aalborg City Council key stakeholders in the area agree to promote ‘smart city’ thinking and initiatives in collaboration with the council. Discursively stakeholders articulate ‘smart’ as proactive system integration in domains that relate to sustainable urban development, like mobility infrastructure, green retrofitting of social housing, smart-grid solutions, the construction of a ‘super’ hospital, university campus improvements etc. Substantial resources are currently invested in place-making projects, and stakeholders wish to explore integrated value creation opportunities. Ultimately, the smart city proponents aim to turn a relatively disadvantaged fringe area into a green growth district that creates value to the greater Aalborg region. The paper explores the smart city agenda as a boundary experience in relation to place-making and urban development in Aalborg East, applying the framework for understanding cross-sector collaborations by Crosby, Bryson and Stone (2010). The notion of a boundary object is at the core of this framework: An object that creates a sense of community, transforms alternative views into shared knowledge and understanding, and stimulates the ability of potentially competing institutional stakeholders to transcend (epistemic, economic, institutional) boundaries in a pursuit of collaborative gains and joint value creation. The paper maps and analyzes multi-actor governance processes in relation to a number of specific place-making projects in Aalborg East. Is the smart city discourse a boundary object in the sense that it stimulates innovative rethinking and transgression of boundaries? Or is it merely a rhetorical window-dressing device that glosses over the fragmented and path-dependent behavioral patterns of institutional stakeholders?
OriginalsprogEngelsk
Publikationsdato10 maj 2015
StatusUdgivet - 10 maj 2015
Begivenhed45th Annual Meeting of the Urban Affairs Association - Miami, Florida, USA
Varighed: 8 apr. 201511 apr. 2015

Konference

Konference45th Annual Meeting of the Urban Affairs Association
Land/OmrådeUSA
ByMiami, Florida
Periode08/04/201511/04/2015

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