Chapter 11 - The circulation of the Smart City imaginary in the Chilean context: A case study of a collaborative platform for governing security

Abstract

The proliferation of technologies, devices, and digital platforms and their growing capacity to gather large amounts of data would seem to be delivering on the promise of a more automated, efficient, and Smart City. In this chapter, we examine the Smarty City circuit in Santiago de Chile and the ways in which various stakeholders bring meaning to this concept. We argue that the sociotechnical imaginary of the Smart City in the Chilean circuit has an ambiguous nature and it is interpreted through making and its positioning in various innovation events, urban laboratories, and government entities that articulate a collaborative network between the state, citizens and private enterprises. Furthermore, we analyze the case of the SoSafe platform, a Chilean smartphone application that seeks to reduce emergency response times through geolocalized reports made by citizens, exploring the scope and limits of the emergence of platform urbanism.