International workshop titled "Beyond smart city transitions (?): Thinking through structural violence and possible radical futures"

The workshop brings together critical urban scholars, especially early career scholars, working on smart urbanism from Global South perspectives. I envision this workshop to be a space to think through the interlinkages between smart urbanism, structural violence, and the possibilities to envision radical futures. Smart urbanism as a logic, practices of institutional overhauling and governance is deployed by various stakeholders using a range of techniques, technologies and socio-spatialities. These are fixed, predefined, top-down interventions that articulate what smart urbanism aims to achieve; a ‘better’ and ‘inclusive’ city, we are often told. Yet, the ways in which smart cities are deployed and structured is a question and expression of power and violence. What has been happening in the Global South is a violent uptake of spaces, structures, people, ecologies, and definitions of what urban life is supposed be through smart city developments. In turn, these smart interventions, as they take hold across the world, are productive of structural violence, in the form of overt violence and “banal power” (Datta and Odendaal 2019). From evictions to make space for smart developments, to algorithmic violence (Safransky 2020), surveillance and digital data erasures, smart cities reproduce old and engender new forms of violence against those marginalised in and by the smart city. Utilising Johan Galtung’s concept of “structural violence” as violence that is “built into the structure and shows up as unequal power and consequently unequal life chances” (Galtung, 1969: 170–71) as an entry point, this workshop aims to start a critical conversation to think through the interlinkages between smart urbanism and structural violence, and how such thinking can push us to work towards alternatives. This workshop thus interrogates the following questions: 1. How does smart urbanism engender forms of structural violence (socio-political, economic, dwelling, ecologies, institutions, and ideologies)? What are the mechanics, sites, and conditions produced by such violence? 2. How do urban dwellers respond to such violences say through overt resistances and/or “quiet encroachments” (Bayat 1997)? 3. How can we learn from these responses? Are alternative and radical futures beyond (or along with) the smart city possible given its structural hold? If yes, what modes, mechanics and blueprints do these futures take? With these questions, the workshop is imagined as a space of collective critical thinking and network building among those who are committed to interrogating these questions. The workshop is organised over 2 days, with one and a half days of workshop sessions and keynote(s) open to the wider academic community in Torino, Italy, and a half a day closed-door workshop with the invited scholars. The closed-door workshop is envisioned to lead to in-depth discussions on the papers, the responses and feedback received during the open sessions. This closed-door workshop will also be a place to chalk out the details of the academic output arising from this workshop. Keynote address: Prof. Gillian Rose, University of Oxford, UK The papers of the workshop are currently being produced as an edited book, currently under contract with the Bristol University Press.