Conducting the Smart Way of Life: Can Increased Order be Considered Equivalent to Increased Quality? A Foucault-Inspired Discourse Analysis of the Smart City Rhetoric

Abstract

Smart cities offer a way of maximizing the performance of city space. Despite critics questioning the benevolence of smart technology, the smart city solutionist rhetoric continues to gain popularity and investment across the world. Explicit challenges highlight the lack of empirical and case-specific investigation, and the corporate driving force in their implementation. In response, this paper investigates the discursive frames shaping life in the Singaporean Smart Nation, selected as an example of an intelligent technology-focused urban environment. Foucault-inspired qualitative and quantitative discourse analysis is used to tease out the expectations placed upon inhabitants through a tripartite structure considering normalisation, responsibilisation and population axes. This paper argues that the techno-social process of development creates the potential for new and deeper means of ensuring compliance in smart cities, which may not be beneficial to those populations. The Singaporean case also highlights the significant need for contextualized analysis of smart city projects.