The embedded intelligence of smart cities: urban life, citizenship and community

This paper reviews Mitchell’s thesis on the transition from the city of bits to e-topia. The review finds it wanting and suggests the problems encountered with the thesis rest with the lack of critical insight e-topia offers into the embedded intelligence of smart cities. It also suggests the difficulties, which the thesis experiences in accounting for the embedded intelligence of smart cities raise serious questions about whether the e-topia demonstrators that digitally-inclusive regeneration platforms stand on are progressive. In particular, whether the demonstrators these platforms stand on are progressive in embedding the intelligence that cities need for them to be smart in not only bridging the digital divide in urban life, but also overcoming any adverse effect, which the inequalities and degradation of such exclusion have on the sense of citizenship and community they in turn construct.