The technological vision of smart urbanism has been promoted as a silver bullet for urban problemsudand a major market opportunity. The search is on for firms and governments to find effectiveudand transferable demonstrations of advanced urban technology. This paper examinesudinitiatives by the UK national government to facilitate urban technological innovation through audrange of strategies, particularly the TSB Future Cities Demonstrator Competition. This caseudstudy is used to explore opportunities and tensions in the practical realisation of the smart cityudimaginary. Tensions are shown to be partly about the conjectural nature of the smart city debate.udAttention is also drawn to weakened capacity of urban governments to control their infrastructuraluddestiny and also constraints on the ability of the public and private sectors to innovate. Theudpaper contributes to smart city debates by providing further evidence of the difficulties in substantiatingudthe smart city imaginary.
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