The embedded intelligence of smart cities

摘要

This article offers an extensive review of Mitchell's thesis on the transition from the city of bits to e-topia and finds it wanting. It suggests that the problems encountered with the thesis lie with the lack of substantive insight it offers into the embedded intelligence of smart cities. Although problematic in itself, the article also suggests that if the difficulties experienced were only methodological they might perhaps be manageable, but the problem is that they run deeper than this and relate to more substantive issues that surround the trajectory of the thesis. This is a critical insight of some significance because if the trajectory of e-topia is not in the direction of either the embedded intelligence of smart cities, or the information and communication technologies of digitally inclusive regeneration platforms, then the question arises as to whether the thesis can be a progressive force for change, or merely a way of reproducing the status quo.