See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/321129716

Exposing smart cities and eco-cities: Frankenstein urbanism and the

sustainability challenges of the experimental city

Article  in  Environment and Planning A · November 2017

DOI: 10.1177/0308518X17738535

CITATIONS READS

11 656

1 author:

Federico Cugurullo
Trinity College Dublin
13 PUBLICATIONS   158 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

SURPASS: how autonomous cars will transform cities. View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Federico Cugurullo on 27 February 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Article
Environment and Planning A
Exposing smart cities and 0(0) 1–20
! The Author(s) 2017
eco-cities: Frankenstein Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

urbanism and the DOI: 10.1177/0308518X17738535

journals.sagepub.com/home/epn

sustainability challenges of
the experimental city
Federico Cugurullo
Department of Geography, Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin, Ireland

Abstract
In recent years, the world has seen the emergence of a number of urban projects which, under
the banner of experimentation, have promoted alternative models of city-making capable, in theory,
of creating sustainable built environments. Among these supposedly experimental models, the
smart city and the eco-city stand out in terms of geographical diffusion, and are hailed by their
advocates as the mark of an innovative urbanism based on a scientific approach to urban
development. Through the analysis of Hong Kong and Masdar City, examples of a smart-city
agenda and an eco-city project respectively, this paper questions the sustainability of so-called
smart cities and eco-cities, by investigating the extent to which they are developed in a controlled
and systematic manner as their developers claim. More specifically, the paper counterclaims
mainstream understandings of smart and ecological urbanism, arguing that what are promoted
as cohesive settlements shaped by a homogeneous vision of the sustainable city, are actually
fragmented cities made of disconnected and often incongruous pieces of urban fabric.
Theoretically, these claims are discussed through the concept of Frankenstein urbanism which
draws upon Mary Shelley’s novel as a metaphor for unsuccessful experiments generated by the
forced union of different, incompatible elements.

Keywords
Experimental urbanism, smart city, eco-city, urban sustainability, Masdar City, Hong Kong

Introduction
As noted by several scholars, in recent years, urban experimentation has become a popular
way to address issues of sustainability in cities, by developing alternative models of
urbanisation (Bulkeley and Castán Broto, 2013; Bulkeley et al., 2014; Caprotti and
Cowley, 2016a; Evans et al., 2016; Karvonen and van Heur, 2014). The argument made

Corresponding author:
Federico Cugurullo, Department of Geography, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin,
Ireland.
Email: CUGURULF@tcd.ie
2 Environment and Planning A 0(0)

by those in favour of urban experiments is that current models of city-making are flawed
and, in the long run, unsustainable: they are responsible for the majority of global socio-
environmental issues (such as climate change and resource scarcity) and have to be replaced.
Echoing such claim, over the last decade, several, supposedly alternative models of urban
development have emerged, contending to possess the formula for a sustainable urbanism.
To date, as evidenced by a number of studies, the two most popular typologies of
experimental urbanism in the world are the smart city and the eco-city which count
thousands of initiatives across different geographical spaces (Aina, 2017; Caprotti, 2014;
Caprotti and Cowley, 2016b; Cugurullo, 2016a; De Jong et al., 2015; Joss et al., 2011;
Rapoport, 2014; Trencher and Karvonen, 2017; Wu et al., 2017; Yin et al., 2015).
Theoretically, the two models approach sustainability from different perspectives. While
the eco-city ideal, as originally envisioned by Register (1987, 2006), focuses on ecology and
on finding a balance between human societies and ecosystems via urban design and
behavioural change, the smart-city movement relies on information technology to produce
data on how the city operates, particularly in terms of energy (production, distribution and
consumption) and transport, and uses it to decrease the costs and waste that urban living
generates (Calzada and Cobo, 2015; Caragliu et al, 2011; Garau et al., 2016; Hashem et al.,
2016; Kitchin, 2014; Kummitha and Crutzen, 2017; Luque-Ayala and Marvin, 2015;
McNeill, 2015; Mosannenzadeh et al., 2017; Neirotti et al., 2014; Vanolo, 2014; Viitanen
and Kingston, 2014). In practice, however, actually existing smart and eco-city projects share
numerous traits and, despite bearing different labels, they tend to be the product of the same
pro-economic growth matrix. Examining a variety of case studies from different
geographical spaces, scholars have shown that alleged smart cities and eco-cities (a) are
far from their philosophical ideals, (b) they rarely innovate and instead replicate
traditional capitalist strategies of urbanisation, and (c) they seldom keep their promises of
sustainability (Taylor Buck and While, 2017; Caprotti, 2016; Chang and Sheppard, 2013;
Colding and Barthel, 2017; Cugurullo, 2013a; Datta, 2015; March and Ribera-Fumaz, 2016;
Rapoport and Hult, 2017; Rosol et al., 2017; Wiig, 2016). This paper is situated precisely in
this strand of critical urban research committed to ‘revealing the gaps between ideas and
realities in individual cases’ of smart and eco-city projects (Chang, 2017: 3). It complements
the above body of work, by focusing on an aspect of urban experiments which, to date, has
received little attention: the implementation of the master plan and, more specifically, the
extent to which so-called smart and eco-cities are built by methodically following a
comprehensive plan of action, as their developers claim.
One of the arguments made by developers, stakeholders and advocates of projects for
smart cities and eco-cities is that such initiatives are different and alternative, inasmuch as
they are developed and implemented following a detailed master plan in a systematic
manner. The assumption is that there is a scientific approach to urbanisation, based on a
holistic and rigorous plan of action which shapes the entire city, homogeneously, making it
sustainable. In the literature, for example, according to Zygiaris (2013: 225), ‘Barcelona’s
smart planning follows a top–down design approach, which ensures a comprehensive smart
city plan’, while for Washburn et al. (2009: 9), Masdar City and Songdo ‘have the luxury of
incorporating the Smart City vision in its entirety.’ In a similar vein, a number of cities are
promoting themselves, in the media, as the locus of large-scale, methodical experimentations
whose official target is the city and its society as a whole. Barcelona, for instance, is described
as a smart city which ‘improves quality of life for its citizens across the whole society’
(Barcelona City Council, 2017: no page). Milano is considered smart as its regeneration
scheme ‘leads to a better quality of life through effective, accessible and intelligent tools
aimed at the optimisation of resources for all citizens’ (Milano Smart City, 2017: no page).
Cugurullo 3

Vienna appears to approach smart urbanism ‘systematically’ and ‘through comprehensive

innovation’ to provide ‘the best quality of life for all inhabitants’ (Smart City Wien, 2017:
no page). Masdar City is portrayed as an ‘eco-city, greenprint for the city of the future’
because of ‘innovative sustainable development and a single vision of sustainability
engineered on a grand scale’ (Masdar Initiative, 2017a: no page).
Problematically, what this ontological approach denotes is an understanding of smart and
eco-city projects as organic urban experiments shaped by a homogeneous vision of the
sustainable city. Moreover, the terminology through which the cities subject to
experimentation, are portrayed in the literature and in the media by means of singular
nouns, such as city, project and initiative, denoting one thing, hides the fragmentation,
heterogeneity and chaos (intended as a condition of disorder characterised by a lack of
regular, methodical arrangement) that, as this paper argues, can be found at the very
foundation of alleged experimental cities. Far from being a cohesive whole, the same
initiative is rolled out across different scales ranging from the individual to the region,
generates different impacts in different spaces and, above all, features different components
(see, also, Coletta et al., 2017; Cowley et al., 2017; Cugurullo, 2016b; Ferraris et al., 2017;
Gardner and Hespanhol, 2017; Joss et al., 2017; Leszczynski, 2016; Shelton et al., 2015; van
Winden and van den Buuse, 2017). This study seeks to break the aura of singularity, i.e. the
quality of being singular, surrounding the two most popular types of urban experiments, smart
cities and eco-cites, by unpacking the many incongruous elements that compose them. It shows
that smart and eco-city initiatives are not homogeneous experiments, but rather fragmented
projects made up of a plethora of sub-projects which do not act in concert. Ultimately, the
paper contends that the disorganic nature of so-called smart cities and eco-cities is one of the
main reasons why such initiatives often fail to realise their sustainability potential, creating
spaces which foster social injustice and biodiversity loss.
These claims are supported empirically through the analysis of two case studies:
Masdar City in Abu Dhabi as an example of a new eco-city project, and Hong
Kong as an instance of a large-scale smart-city initiative. The rationale behind the
choice of Masdar City and Hong Kong is twofold. The paper does not aim to offer a
comparative analysis, but rather an examination of the fragmentary nature of urban
experiments, first in the two mainstream typologies of experimental urbanism (eco-
cities and smart cities) and second in the two main types of built environment (new
cities and existing settlements). Theoretically, the paper is framed by the concept of
urban experimentation and seeks to contribute to contemporary debates in the field of
experimental urbanism, by developing the theory of Frankenstein urbanism whose
dynamics are illustrated by using Mary Shelley’s novel as a metaphor for unsuccessful
experiments generated by the forced union of different, incongruous parts.
Given the limitations that are intrinsic to case-study research, the objective here is not to
provide a one-size-fits-all conceptual framework. The following argument is animated by a
philosophy of research akin to what Peck (2016, 2017) defines as conjunctural urbanism. The
paper understands and approaches the fragmentation that characterises smart and eco-city
projects, first as part of a broader and much older trend in urban development, inasmuch as,
across history, cities have constantly grown as fragmented artefacts shaped by different and
often colliding forces (a condition that has become even more evident in recent times with
the diffusion of neoliberal urban agendas); second, as a situated and diverse phenomenon
connected to the specificity of the single case studies. Therefore, by approaching the subject
of inquiry as the interconnection or conjuncture of these two dimensions, the paper seeks to
offer only a ‘midlevel formulation’ whose explanatory power remains open and revisable
(Peck, 2016: 16).
4 Environment and Planning A 0(0)

In the next section, before turning to the cases of Masdar City and Hong Kong, the paper
contextualises the two case studies, by drawing upon literature on experimental urbanism
and placing it, for the first time, in conversation with studies in urban history on the chronic
fragmentation of urbanisation. The argument is that the city has always been a site of
conflicting interests and powers and, across times and spaces, the built environment has
reflected the diversity of urban politics via physically diverse urban spaces. How this
diversity impacts on the sustainability potential of projects for smart cities and eco-cities
and what can be done to mitigate the issues that this condition generates, represent the crux
of the matter for a sustainable urbanism and the key questions that the paper seeks to
answer.
The material discussed in the paper is based on empirical research which took place, at
different stages, in Abu Dhabi and Hong Kong across 2010 and 2016, for a total of fourteen
months. 24 semi-structured and 18 unstructured interviews were conducted with the
principal actors behind the urban development of Masdar City and Hong Kong,
including members of the public sector such as policy-makers, developers and spatial
planners from local planning councils, as well as representatives from the main
architectural studios, investment companies and clean-tech multinationals, involved in the
design, finance and technology of the projects, respectively. In addition, key documents,
including master plans, development agendas and environmental reports, were examined in
order to triangulate the information emerged in the interviews. Given the controversial
nature of the information disclosed during the research, interviewees have been
anonymised and their identity has been replaced by their role.

The past and present of urban experiments

Conceptually, the paper is framed by the theme of urban experimentation as a lens through
which to examine the two most diffused typologies of experimental urban projects, smart city
and eco-city initiatives which, as noted in the previous section, tend to differ in theory, but
not in practice. More specifically, the paper draws upon a recent strand in urban scholarship,
which approaches cities as sites for technical and political experimentation, where alternative
models of city-making can, theoretically, be tested and implemented, to produce spaces of
sustainability. Recent studies show that, across the world, the built environment is being
increasingly used as a laboratory in which policy-makers have the possibility to test, under
controlled conditions, new types of governance and urban infrastructure (Evans, 2016;
Karvonen and van Heur, 2014). Following the logic of experimentation, a growing
number of cities have become the testbed for new urban technologies such as smart grids
and automated transport systems, as well as for new urban partnerships bringing together
different stakeholders, from city-councils and universities to clean-tech companies and
supranational politico-economic unions (Bulkeley and Castán Broto, 2013; Cugurullo,
2016a; Evans and Karvonen, 2014; McLean et al., 2015).
As observed by some scholars, the assumption is that urban experiments take place in a
controlled and scientific manner (Evans and Karvonen, 2011). More specifically, the ethos of
urban experimentation seems to be based on three key principles: a rigorous process of
knowledge production through which a city (or part of it) is examined to elaborate ad hoc
solutions to sustainability issues (Karvonen and van Heur, 2014); reflexivity, as a way to
critically reflect on both the positive and negative effects of the strategies and technologies
adopted, and adjust the plan of action accordingly (McFarlane, 2011); and provision of
evidence, by deriving choices from data on the basis of which ‘particular urban
infrastructure regimes’ are challenged, and alternative and more sustainable urbanisms are
Cugurullo 5

implemented (Bulkeley et al., 2014: 1477). What binds these principles together is the
formulation of master plans. At the core of the scientific method is the orderly
arrangement of steps (calculations, observations, reflections, etc.) to accomplish an end.
In the case of urban experiments, the nature and order of these steps is, in theory,
determined by a plan giving comprehensive instruction about what has to be built, how,
where and when. This is a key reason why, according to advocates of projects for smart and
eco-cities, these initiatives differ from standard and more chaotic processes of city-making
and are capable of achieving sustainability. However, the extent to which such urban
experiments are actually disciplined by what scholars like Batty (2012), Bettencourt and
West (2010) call a science of cities, remains unclear. Indeed, a key question posed by
critical geographers and urbanists working in the field of experimental urbanism has been:
are alleged experimental urban projects driving real change, leading cities towards a
condition of sustainability or are they maintaining business as usual? (Castán Broto and
Bulkeley, 2013; Kaika, 2017; Karvonen et al., 2013; McGuirk et al., 2014).
To answer this question, the paper draws upon the insights of urban historians such as
Mumford (1961) and Benevolo (1993), stressing the fact that, historically, cities, because of
the number and diversity of the actors governing them, have rarely been uniform artefacts
built according to a homogeneous vision of urban development. Instead, they have grown
following what were in most cases uncoordinated and fragmented processes of urbanisation.
As noted by Mumford (1961), urban settlements, ranging from small towns to imperial
capitals, have been the product of intersecting visions cultivated and implemented by a
plethora of different political actors and, as a result, the built environment has been
repeatedly characterised by a multitude of heterogeneous and often incongruous elements.
In the Middle Ages, for example, as Benevolo (1993) points out, the city did not have a single
centre: it had several centres reflecting different forms of power. ‘The physical form of the
city depended upon the political organization’ of the city itself which ‘served as a stage for
the meetings and conflicts of many players’ (Benevolo, 1993: 40).
This is a phenomenon which crosses time and space. Far away from the European cities
discussed by Benevolo, in 1520, for instance, Cortés (2004), during the conquistadores’
exploration of Mexico, vividly described in a letter to his king, the capital of the Aztec
empire, Tenochtitlan, as a patchwork of diverse buildings and neighbourhoods controlled
by different political forces. Similar examples can be found in the Renaissance, in the
Baroque Era, during the Enlightenment and, with the birth of the industrial city, across
the late modern period (Conforti, 2005; Mumford, 1961). Specifically in relation to master
plans, the chronic tension between urban politics and urban form discussed above, is one of
the main reasons why attempts to implement blueprints for ideal cities, have been repeatedly
unsuccessful. Projects for ideal cities such as Sforzinda, for example, conceived by a single
mind (Italian architect and philosopher Filarete) and characterised by a rigid geometric
design, failed because it is extremely hard, if not impossible, to unify all the different
interests of all the different actors involved in the politics of the city, into a single urban
design (Fishman, 1982).
Today, the tension between urban politics and urban form is not dissimilar, and a number
of studies carried out in the Global North and South, show that the politics of contemporary
cities is as diverse as that of medieval, renaissance and baroque cities, and continues to
produce physically diverse urban spaces (see, for instance, Davis and Monk, 2008; Strom
and Mollenkopf, 2007). Particularly in relation to cases of neoliberal urbanism, geographers
and urbanists have been emphasising how, across different spaces, urbanisation is often
shaped by politico-economic patterns which, although marked by contextual variegations,
tend to erode the power of the state as the sole ruler and builder of the city (Brenner and
6 Environment and Planning A 0(0)

Theodore, 2002; Peck et al., 2013). The physical results of these trends have been succinctly
described in another strand of geographical literature as assemblages. Through the notion of
assemblage, cities are not seen as ‘organic wholes’, but rather as spatial formations
composed of different elements which are drawn together at particular temporal
conjunctions: a phenomenon triggered by the absence of a central and absolute form of
power and the presence of multiple sources of power, which co-exist and co-influence urban
development (Anderson and McFarlane, 2011: 125).
Although it is possible to find, particularly during the Renaissance and the Baroque era,
cases of master-planned settlements based on the vision of a single actor and characterised
by physical uniformity, these are extremely rare exceptions coming from spatio-temporal
contexts in which kings or lesser rulers were capable of ruling a country or a city-state single-
handedly (Calabi, 2001; Kruft, 1989; Rosenau, 1983). Both history and contemporary urban
studies show that the uniformity of the built environment has been chronically challenged by
the diversity of its politics and this leit motif is what the next section, shifting the focus to the
present day, seeks to empirically unpack in relation to an alleged eco-city project and its
master plan.

Exposing the eco-city: The case of Masdar City

Masdar City is a project for a new master-planned eco-city, which has been under
development in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) since 2007. Once completed, the
new city is meant to occupy a surface of 6 km2 and accommodate 45,000 to 50,000
people in an urban space which is slowly but steadily emerging in the Emirati desert.
Officially promoted as ‘the world’s most sustainable eco-city’, Masdar City is hailed by
developers and stakeholders as an alternative model of sustainable urban development,
based on a mix of traditional Islamic architecture and clean technologies (Masdar
Initiative, 2017b: no page). However, the new Emirati city has been criticised by
several urbanists, geographers and political scientists who have lamented the
undemocratic spirit of the project and its scarce environmental achievements,
particularly in relation to the energy and water supply chain management and
ecological impact of the settlement (see, for instance, Crot, 2013; Cugurullo, 2013a,
2013b). By focusing on the political composition of the project, this section shows
how different interests of different stakeholders are translated into different elements of
the city, and provides an insight into how the absence of a cohesive master plan
fragments the materiality of Masdar City, thereby weakening its sustainability potential.
There are a number of actors behind the development of Masdar City and each one of
them has its own set of interests and responsibilities. First, there is Abu Dhabi: a sheikhdom
ruled by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and characterised by a strong authoritarian
regime which dictates every aspect of the life of the emirate, including its urbanisation. Abu
Dhabi is the sole funder of Masdar City. It lunched the project in 2007 and, since then, it has
been supplying all the capital that is necessary for its implementation: US$20 billion. The
reasons for such investment are connected to the agenda of Abu Dhabi which is, in turn,
connected to its geography, politics and economy. The main objective of Abu Dhabi is the
preservation of its political elite, namely the sheikh and the royal family. To use an Orwellian
expression, when it comes to the agenda of Abu Dhabi, ‘the object of power is power’
(Orwell, 2004: 234). As Linz and Stepan (1996) explain, in a sultanistic regime, such as
that of Abu Dhabi, the power of the ruler over his subjects is based on a relationship
made of fear and, above all, rewards. When rewards are missing, the authority of the
ruler begins to crumble.
Cugurullo 7

The events of the Arab Spring have shown that, in the Middle-East and North Africa, the
only undemocratic states that have been capable of avoiding irreversible political turmoil are
those characterised by strong welfare systems: countries like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar and
Bahrain where local citizens live in a gilded cage made of substantial economic benefits and
rewards, and have therefore little or no incentive to subvert the government and change the
state of affairs. However, such gilded cages are not easy to sustain as they require a solid
economic system which is what Abu Dhabi is missing. What looks like a prosperous state
hides, in reality, a very fragile economy grounded in a finite resource: oil. Abu Dhabi’s oil
reserves are expected to last for approximately five to eight decades and if the emirate wants
to preserve its welfare system and political institutions, it has to develop non-petroleum
economic sectors, and this is why, as a local policy-maker explained in an interview, ‘the
government is very actively creating new businesses in sectors like clean technology, to
diversify the economy away from oil and gas’ (see also Cugurullo, 2016a; Luomi, 2009).
Second, there is the Masdar Initiative, a public company, specialising in clean technology,
which is in charge of the Masdar City project. It supervises the development and
implementation of the new city, focusing on the managerial and economic aspects of the
project. The Masdar Initiative receives Abu Dhabi’s capital and takes every decision with
regards to how the budget is spent. It is up to its managers to make decisions over the use of
land, the number and type of buildings and infrastructures that will be implemented, what
temporal order will be followed in the construction phase, and what supply chains will
sustain the built environment. Most importantly, the Masdar Initiative has to make the
project profitable or, as an interviewed member of the Marketing and Communications
section of Masdar City put it simply, ‘bring cash by making sustainability commercial.’
The interests of the Masdar Initiative are Abu Dhabi’s interests, and its aim is to develop
a non-oil sector of the economy via Masdar City.
The Masdar Initiative is responsible for the business that underpins the development of
Masdar City. The new city is used as a living laboratory where private companies (including
multinationals such as Siemens, Schneider and Mitsubishi) can rent portions of the built
environment to research, develop, implement and test under controlled conditions, new
clean-tech products. These innovative technologies include smart grids and sensors,
concentrated solar power stations and autonomous transport systems, and their
development is carried out through what are de facto sub-projects within the Masdar City
project. The process functions in synergy with the Masdar Initiative which shares its teams of
engineers, researchers and technicians, and takes a percentage of the revenues that are
generated once the technology that is developed in Masdar City is commercialised and
sold. As a manager from Schneider summarised in an interview, ‘we have a strategic
alliance with the Masdar Initiative. We test new technologies, smart grids for example,
and we develop them together. Once a new technology is ready, it is implemented and
integrated in the city and commercialised straightaway. Once we sell it, Masdar gets a
share, a percentage of the revenues that we generate with the product.1’ Moreover, every
Masdarian product is associated with intellectual property rights, such as patents, which
investors can buy to produce and commercialise that product, or to extract royalties from
the companies that infringe a patent. Ultimately, the combination of the income that the
Masdar Initiative generates from sales, rents and patents, is a direct source of profit for Abu
Dhabi and represents a new sector of the emirate’s economy (clean technology), which exists
because of Masdar City.
This business opens the gates to the city to a plethora of actors. As of this writing, there
are several private companies which have signed a partnership with the Masdar Initiative to
co-develop clean technologies. These clean-tech companies originate from various parts of
8 Environment and Planning A 0(0)

the world. They usually have different backgrounds, different missions and different visions,
but the objective that is at the core of their agendas is the same: making profit. Clean-tech
companies such as Siemens (Germany) and Mitsubishi (Japan), sustain themselves by
generating income: a target which is accomplished mostly through the sale of clean
technologies for which there is demand. Moreover, especially for multinationals, a core
aim is to use the architecture of their buildings to reflect the values and image of the
company, such as in the case of Siemens whose offices in and outside Germany are
shaped by a similar aesthetic. Given that for the Masdar Initiative it is necessary to have
these companies on board (without them the Masdarian clean-tech business would collapse),
it has to create a condition in which they can all fulfil their interests. As a representative from
Schneider succinctly pointed out, ‘Masdar needs big companies like Schneider in the city’,
and this is the reason why it gives them the power to urbanise.
In the Masdar City project, every company that is in partnership with the Masdar
Initiative has the opportunity to shape the new city. First, this is done via technological
development. As mentioned earlier in this section, Masdar City is a living laboratory where
new technology is developed and tested. In order to collect data on their products and see
how they function in a real-life environment, companies can integrate them in the built
environment, thereby changing the urban fabric of the settlement. The influence on the
form of the city varies according to the dimension and quantity of the technology that is
installed, which ranges from small smart sensors to large beam-down solar power towers.
Second, the partners of the Masdar Initiative have the option to build their headquarters or
a branch in Masdar City. They can rent part of the city, choose a specific design and
architecture and realise their vision. ‘We have our own architects’ specified, during an
interview, a manager from Siemens whose impact on the built environment has been
spatially substantial. In 2014, the German company finished the construction of its
Middle-East headquarters: a large office building which occupies 20,000 m2 of the total
area of Masdar City.
The influence of several companies on the form of the city, collides against the agency of
what is, nominally, one of the most important actors in the Masdar City project: Foster and
Partners (FþP). The London-based international architectural firm is responsible for the
master plan of the new settlement and oversees its implementation. The initial master plan
was inspired by traditional Islamic architecture and, in particular, by cities such as Aleppo
(Syria) and Shibam (Yemen), both originally characterised by a compact urban design meant
to maximise passive shading and air circulation. The original vision of FþP was that of a
car-free city supplied by renewable energy and served by an automated transport system. A
distinct feature of the master plan was the division of the city into an overground and an
underground level. A vast undercroft was supposed to work both as a station and a
transport network for automated public vehicles, so to increase the amount and size of
pedestrian streets and public space on the surface. In addition, the new Emirati city was
meant to be divided transversally and horizontally by three narrow parks whose purpose was
to channel the winds of the desert and decrease the perceived temperature in the city (for the
original rendering, see FþP, 2007). However, the power of FþP in terms of decision-making
is limited because, in Masdar City, the economic interests of the Masdar Initiative and its
partners are prioritised over the environmental and social goals of Foster’s architects. As a
representative from FþP, responsible for the master plan, stated in an interview, ‘the
phasing of the project is driven by economics and the needs of the clients dictate where
the different buildings will be plugged-in.’
The multiple interferences of the business partners of the Masdar Initiative, nullify the
coherence of the master plan and, ultimately, have an impact on the sustainability of the new
Cugurullo 9

city. There are three main issues to consider. First, many of the clean-tech projects that take
place in Masdar City and shape its built environment are disconnected from the master plan
and, above all, from each other. As a result, instead of working together to decrease the
environmental impact of the settlement, they operate in an uncoordinated and individualistic
manner which often penalises other sustainability initiatives in the city. An example of this
fragmented urbanism is the implementation of the Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) project
initiated by FþP, and the development of a new model of electric car by one the partners of
the Masdar Initiative: Mitsubishi. These two projects, both developed and implemented in
Masdar City, are underpinned by two oppositional philosophies and purposes. The aim of
the PRT, a system of driverless automated vehicles for up to four passengers, is to eliminate
automobile dependency. It was designed to decrease energy waste by connecting every area
of the new city via the shortest route, and create a mobile public space for social encounters.
By promoting private transport and free roaming in the city, the message of Mitsubishi’s
electric cars goes against that of the PRT. Moreover, in order to function, the two projects
require two completely different types of infrastructure and urban design. The PRT is
engineered to work largely underground. PRT vehicles operate primarily in an undercroft,
while electric cars run on the surface of the city. In addition, cars need streets that are
broader than those used by pedestrians and are incompatible with the system of narrow
alleys envisaged by FþP: a system which, by maximising air circulation and shading, was
supposed to encourage people to walk even during the summer months and decrease the
dependency on air-conditioning and cars, with considerable advantages in terms of well-
being, social interaction and energy reduction. A form of transport based on cars also
requires a network of streets that criss-crosses the entire city. This is a type of urban
design which clashes with the original linear distribution of green spaces, and ultimately
reduces air circulation, thereby increasing the perceived temperature in Masdar City and the
use of air-conditioning systems.
Second, because of this individualistic approach to sustainability, the Masdar Initiative
and its business partners evaluate the success of their projects individually, instead of
considering the overall benefit that they bring to the city. The PRT project, for example,
although successful from an environmental and social perspective, was abandoned by the
Masdar Initiative inasmuch as, for the Emirati company, it was considered to be too
expensive to implement in relation to its potential investment return. As a manager from
the Masdar Initiative put it in an interview, ‘the PRT costs a fortune and Masdar City is not
an environmental crusade.’ The implementation of the PRT stopped in 2009 when the
Masdar Initiative signed a contract with Mitsubishi to research and develop electric cars:
a product for which the market analysts of Masdar City believed there was more demand.
Today, PRT vehicles serve approximately 10% of the city. What had already been built has
been kept alive by the Masdar Initiative, and continues to function while the city grows
following an oppositional urbanistic rationale which is gradually making the PRT useless.
Third, thinking of sustainability individualistically means that the interests of single
companies are prioritised over the overall interests of the city, and the fact that the main
interests of private companies are economic in nature, means that in Masdar City economic
objectives are prioritised over environmental and social concerns. Key issues of social justice
are not taken into account and there is scarce consideration for the distribution of the
environmental benefits provided by the new city. The majority of housing space (80%),
for example, is reserved for high-income workers, and while social housing does feature in
the planning agenda, it covers only a minor portion of the settlement and is supposed to be
implemented at a later (and undefined) stage. In addition, ecological questions that cannot
be easily translated into profit are discarded. Little effort, for instance, is made to organise
10 Environment and Planning A 0(0)

the supply chains behind the development of the new city (whose provision of water and
energy is sustained mostly by petroleum) as to be less harmful to the local environment and
the global climate, and limited attention is paid to the impact that urbanisation has on
regional ecosystems and ecosystem services. Instead, the focus of the Masdar Initiative
and its partners is on CO2, inasmuch as most of the technology that is developed and
sold via Masdar City is designed to reduce the carbon emissions of cities: a choice based
on the fact that, because of the current climate crisis and climate change discourses, such
technology is now in demand (see also Swyngedouw, 2010).
As this section has shown, the construction of Masdar City has not been disciplined by a
coherent and precise master plan. What has been promoted as a homogenous, master-
planned city is, in reality, a patchwork made of incongruous parts developed by different
actors with different interests. This type of urbanism, as the specific example of the PRT has
illustrated, creates a tension among the components of Masdar City, thereby limiting its
sustainability potential. Keeping the same analytical focus, the paper now turns to the case
of Hong Kong to empirically explore another mainstream type of experimental urbanism:
the smart city.

Exposing the smart city: The case of Hong Kong

Hong Kong is an urban region of 2755 km2, with an estimated population of 7346 people
(Census and Statistics Department, 2017). Born as a city-state in 1841 with the British
occupation of Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong is less than 200 years old: a factor which
makes this Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (SAR) much
older than Masdar City, but centuries younger than other global cities such as London and
New York (Shelton et al., 2013). Nonetheless, what at the dawn of British colonial rule, was
described as a ‘barren rock’, is now one of the most powerful financial and trade centres in
the world and a fast-growing settlement with more skyscrapers than New York (Shelton
et al., 2013: 2; Shen, 2008; The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2017). However, while,
chronologically and quantitatively, the urban and economic growth of Hong Kong might
seem impressive and unique, from a sustainability point of view, the story of the city reflects
some of the most common socio-environmental problems that large urban settlements from
around the world undergo today.
Hong Kong is experiencing high levels of air pollution, due to large amounts of CO2
emitted into a maze-like built environment which hinders air circulation and traps pollutants
(Higgins, 2013; World Bank, 2017). Hong Kong’s water, sea water in particular, is also
extremely polluted, as the city has one of the busiest container ports in the world, which
represents a constant source of traffic, waste and, ultimately, a major threat to the marine
biodiversity of the region and human health (Wong and Wan, 2009; WWF, 2015).
Characterised by a rising GINI coefficient, Hong Kong is a divided city where the
distribution of environmental burdens and benefits across sectors of society is unequal,
and a large number of low-income households are located in the most degraded housing
environments (Hong Kong Government, 2012; LSE Cities, 2011; The Guardian, 2013, 2017).
As noted by several scholars, ‘the construction industry in Hong Kong has long been
associated with poor quality’ (Tam et al., 2000: 437). A number of studies denounce the
presence across the city-region of hundreds of run-down residential buildings which damage
both the natural environment and the occupiers (see Chiang and Tang, 2003). Doing
business in a geographical area characterised by a chronic lack of flat, developable land,
Hong Kong’s developers tend to maximise the usable space by building high-rise housing
units, while reducing construction costs through the implementation of low-quality
Cugurullo 11

infrastructure: a situation which has produced a hyper-dense built environment where only
high-income workers can afford safe and healthy homes (Chan et al., 2002).
It is in this context that, over the last decade, the local government has promoted a series
of initiatives meant to steer the urbanisation of Hong Kong towards a condition of urban
sustainability (Cugurullo, 2017). First in 2007 with the publication of Hong Kong 2030, a
large-scale urban agenda built around grandiose environmental, social and economic
objectives but, as noted by scholars such as Francesch-Huidobro (2012) and Higgins
(2013), largely ineffective due to its non-compulsory nature, and, more recently, with an
ambitious smart-city programme. Launched by the government in September 2013 under the
name of Smarter Hong Kong, Smarter Living, Hong Kong’s project for a smart city, is
presented as an innovative and cohesive plan of action or, in the words of the Secretary
for Commerce and Economic Development, a ‘blueprint’ meant to simultaneously re-shape
the urban and the economic fabric of Hong Kong, by developing new information and
communication technologies and integrating them in the city (Commerce and Economic
Development Bureau, 2013: 1). From the same analytical angle used for Masdar City, this
section now looks at the politics underpinning Hong Kong’s smart-city agenda, and shows
how its implementation has been fragmented by the influence of a number of different
stakeholders which have produced a built environment far less homogeneous and
innovative than what the local government claims.
The development of the smart-city agenda of Hong Kong is intrinsically connected to the
political economy of the region. The economic life of Hong Kong is based upon the principle
of One Country, Two Systems meaning that, although the city-region is, politically, part of
China, from an economic perspective Hong Kong is not subjected to mainland China’
socialism, and operates under its pre-unification economic system: capitalism. Today,
Hong Kong is shaped by a neoliberal model of economic and urban development.
According to the Index of Economic Freedom (2017), Hong Kong has the world’s freest
economy: a condition which economists have often described as laissez-faire capitalism
(see Cheung, 2000). The intervention of the state in the economic activities that take place
across the city-region is minimum, and great freedom is given to the many forces that form
Hong Kong’s private sector, particularly in finance and real-estate which constitute the core
of the economy (Haila, 2000; Lai, 2012). Similarly, when it comes to urbanisation, the role of
the government over the shape and function of the built environment is marginal. As noted
by Raco and Street (2012), the urban development of Hong Kong is not framed or guided by
a governmental vision of the city. Instead, land (which is publicly owned) is allocated to
developers through a bidding process and, once a lease is signed, the authority of the
government over what will be built in a parcel is little or none.
With thousands of private companies competing for the control of parcels of land, and
hundreds of them gaining the right to shape a portion of the city, the urban politics of Hong
Kong is extremely diverse, and so is the built environment. The laissez-faire attitude of the
government towards urbanisation, in combination with the absence of an overarching plan
of urban development, has produced a city composed of heterogeneous and disconnected
urban spaces. Developers have the first and last word on the form of the parts of the city that
they control, and act independently with little or no knowledge of how the other parts are
structured and operate. In such a fragmented urban-political context, a smart-city agenda,
intended as a cohesive plan of urban renewal and expansion, cannot be realised. As a
representative from the local planning department confirmed during an interview, ‘we
don’t have an integrated policy.’ In the words of the representative, Hong Kong’s
approach toward smart urbanism is ‘project-based’ and focused on the single rather than
on the whole. This is an approach which does not produce a smart city functioning
12 Environment and Planning A 0(0)

organically to improve urban living across the whole settlement. Instead, it generates a
number of smart buildings, infrastructures and technologies which are not integrated in a
broader system, and function independently as separate entities.
Among the many examples of smart-city projects taking place in Hong Kong, the case of
IBM is emblematic. IBM, a multinational corporation specialising in computer science and
information technology, is one of the global leaders in smart devices ranging from data-
analysis software to power grids. It has a large branch in Hong Kong, called IBM Hong
Kong (IBM HK), which has been providing services across the city-region for over fifty
years. At the time of writing, IBM HK is involved in several local projects, mostly with the
private sector, which are part of Smarter Planet: the firm’s manifesto of smart urbanism
broadly advertised as a perpetual condition of real-time knowledge production via digital
devices, which informs and improves urban living (IBM HK, 2017). Among the companies
that have recently used IBM HK’s services, there are big multinationals such as Cathay
Pacific, owning entire buildings in different areas of the city, as well as smaller Chinese
companies which occupy only a portion of what is usually a large office complex.
The practice of IBM HK’s smart urbanism is indicative of three key issues. First, the
companies that consume IBM HK’s services do not act in concert: each one of them operates
on an individual basis for its own benefit. This means that the advantages produced by smart
technologies are confined within the private spaces of single companies, and are not equally
distributed across Hong Kong. IBM HK’s energy solutions, for instance, mainly consisting
of smart sensors and dynamic energy networks designed to optimise the use of energy and
reduce waste, are not operative in the whole city. Instead, they are implemented and function
only in the buildings where that specific service has been paid for, and their economic, social and
environmental benefits (such as savings, safety and clean and healthy environments) are
available only to IBM’s customers. The lack of cohesion is starker when multinationals come
into play. A company like Cathay Pacific, for example, employs IBM software and hardware to
maximise the production, circulation and storage of the data that its business generates. The
data is then analysed by an IBM programme, and Cathay Pacific uses the information collected
to make data-based decisions over its commercial operations. Ultimately, the technologies of
IBM HK infuse intelligence into Cathay Pacific’s economic activities and increment the profit of
the company, but while Cathay Pacific is located in Hong Kong, its profit is not exactly Hong
Kong’s profit. Because of its multinational nature, Cathay Pacific is composed of stakeholders
which do not even live in Hong Kong. Moreover, under the local low-tax regime, it is only a
minimal part of the company’s income that feeds into the local economy.
Second, it is important to note that, in addition to being unevenly distributed, these smart
interventions, affect and improve exclusively office spaces, not residential buildings, thereby
providing no alternative urbanism to the one that has been causing the housing disease
discussed earlier in this section. No innovative strategy is developed to improve the
quality of the buildings in which people live, and the housing landscape of the region
continues to be fractured, with a minority of high-priced properties of a high standard
and a majority of low-quality residential estates. This disregard for social issues derives
from the government’s prioritisation of economic targets and, more directly, from a
conscious choice of the Planning Department which leaves urbanisation in the hands of
private developers, to maximise the business potential of the land. ‘We are not taking the
lead’ admitted in an interview a member of the Planning Department in charge of Hong
Kong’s smart-city agenda, explaining the economic rationale behind the position of the
Department: ‘We are trying to change the environment to make it more conducive to
business. We need to make the environment attractive to companies and the smart-city
concept seems to be the way forward.’
Cugurullo 13

Third, at the regional scale, such planning void, does not fragment only the built
environment: smart buildings, infrastructures and technologies are developed in isolation
from each other and from the natural environment. From an ecological point of view, this
implies a disregard for ecosystems and ecosystem services, inasmuch as state-of-the-art
intelligent buildings, while capable of processing complex problems regarding, for
instance, their energy performance, have no understanding of the bioregion that is around
them. Emblematic of this unecological urbanism is the exclusion from the smart-city agenda
of Hong Kong’s only administrative division with an expertise in environmental preservation
and ecology: the Environment Bureau. As the manager of a company working on the
development of a large complex of new high-tech buildings stated in an interview, ‘the
Environment Bureau is not involved’ and constructions have been carried out without any
knowledge of the ecology of the region. The manager admitted that no environmental impact
assessment was conducted during the construction phase which followed what was described
as ‘the standard approach in Hong Kong’: the plot was cleared of the existing vegetation, the
land was levelled and eventually paved. This type of urbanism reflects a broader regional trend
in urban development which, as showed in a number of studies (Long et al., 2014; Qiu et al.,
2015; Wan et al., 2015), has been causing major damages to the ecosystems of China. Cases of
soil erosion, loss of forest cover and wetland decline, due to rapid waves of urbanisation driven
by the logic of economic growth and ecologically uninformed, have been widely documented
in China since the early 1990s (He et al., 2014; Peng et al., 2015). In this sense, what the
government of Hong Kong promotes as an alternative and more sustainable way of
approaching city-making, the smart city, only replicates the same patterns that have
threatened the natural habitat for almost three decades.

Conclusion: Frankenstein urbanism

His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God!
His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a
lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a
more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white
sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips. (Shelley, 2013: 45)

After two years of work, these are the words through which Doctor Victor Frankenstein
describes the results of his experiment, when the light of a candle finally reveals the features
of the thing that he has created. Two years of strenuous work and solitude for which the Doctor
had sacrificed much of his life, and yet it took only a couple of seconds for his dreams to turn into
nightmares and for him to realise his mistake. The creature is composed of several different
pieces which the Doctor had fit together to create the perfect being. Every piece had been
carefully selected as Frankenstein’s plan was to build a creature that was not only immortal,
but also beautiful. The results, alas, are dreadful and the appearance of the man in front of him is
that of a monster. However, what has to be noted in the words of the Doctor is that there is
nothing wrong with the single pieces that form the end product of his experiment. Muscles, hair
and teeth are close to perfection: it is the contrast which makes Frankenstein’s creature a
monster. It is the lack of connection among the heterogeneous elements that the Doctor has
forced together into a single artefact, which causes the experiment to fail.
In a similar vein, when observed through the lens of urban experimentation, the Masdar
City project and Hong Kong’s smart-city agenda can be seen as experiments which fit
together different spaces, infrastructures and technologies, to create a single urban
settlement. However, while all the pieces, individually, function well, their juxtaposition
14 Environment and Planning A 0(0)

creates a tension which destabilises the experiment. In the case of Masdar City, for example,
the PRT and the electric car perform up to expectations, but the diffusion of the latter
hinders the development of the former, and interferes with the original car-free design
meant to create low-carbon, green social spaces. In the case of Hong Kong, smart data-
networks circulate information in real time, and sensors and meters monitor the production
and consumption of energy, but these services take place in isolated high-tech buildings
which being disconnected from the surrounding built and natural environment, tend to
foster social inequality and biodiversity loss.
The paper defines this approach to urban experimentation as Frankenstein urbanism. As a
critical theory meant to understand, critique and improve urban experiments such as smart
and eco-city projects, particularly from a sustainability point of view, the concept of
Frankenstein urbanism can be unpacked into three key statements:

1. Urban experiments take place at different scales and are characterised by different
degrees of experimentation.
2. On a micro-scale (the single building, the single infrastructure and the single technology),
there is experimentation disciplined by a scientific method. Masdar City’s PRT and Hong
Kong’s smart technologies, for instance, are developed by systematically following a series
of engineering and IT studies, calculations and reflections, and before being integrated in
the city, they are tested under controlled conditions. However, on a macro-scale (the city
and the region), there is neither experimentation nor a scientific approach to urbanisation.
The implementation of the Masdar City project and Hong Kong’s smart-city agenda
replicates established unecological and socially unjust patterns of urban development.
Moreover, it is not framed by a detailed and coherent plan of action, and happens in a
chaotic and uncoordinated manner. In essence, the more we zoom in, the more
experimentation we find; the more we zoom out, the less experimentation there is.
3. The absence of a holistic planning strategy, means that the single components of smart
and eco-city projects are thought and implemented on an individual basis and, as a result,
they are not in synch with each other. Individually they perform well, but the lack of
connection creates fragmentation and, ultimately, as illustrated by the case of Masdar
City’s PRT and electric cars, a condition of contrast in which two components oppose
each other’s development. In addition, as observed in Hong Kong, smart interventions
are not only insensitive to the rest of the built environment: they are also disconnected
from the natural environment.

From these core statements, the theory of Frankenstein urbanism develops a twofold
critique. First, in capitalist politico-economic contexts, when two different elements of an
urban experiment contrast each other, the most remunerative one prevails. In the case of
Masdar City, for example, the PRT was successful in environmental and social terms,
but eventually its development was suppressed because, economically, it was not as
profitable as that of electric cars. Given that, in principle, there cannot be sustainability
without balancing economic, social and environmental interests, this is an aspect of urban
experimentation which prevents the formation of sustainable cities. Second, in smart and eco-
city projects the focus is on the single rather than on the whole. From an ecological and social
perspective, this means that buildings, infrastructures and technologies are not designed and
implemented to be connected to the broader bioregion, and to benefit the entire city. Hong
Kong’s new smart buildings, for instance, ignore local ecosystems and are built over them,
outside the most deprived areas of the city, to the advantage of a small percentage of the
population.
Cugurullo 15

In conclusion, what emerges from this study, is that the two most diffused types of urban
experimentation, the smart city and the eco-city, are not promoting alternative and
sustainable strategies of urban development. Instead of advancing a holistic and rigorous
method of city-making, as claimed by their advocates, they are reproposing traditional,
chaotic urban models which have been around for millennia. In this sense, there is not
much difference between the case studies discussed in this paper, and the type of
urbanism that scholars like Mumford and Benevolo found in Medieval cities. Alleged
smart and eco-cities are, like a myriad of cities before them, politically fragmented urban
settlements characterised by fragmented built environments. What differs is that, from a
sustainability point of view, this is an urbanism which was relatively less problematic in the
Middle Ages when the environmental, social and economic impact of cities was lower, but
now, given the current magnitude of urbanisation, it cannot be sustained. In the 21st-
century, a cohesive and synergistic planning scheme, combining different yet
complemental disciplines, such as geography, ecology, sociology, engineering, computer
science and architecture, is the only weapon that can prevail against the monsters
generated by the practice of Frankenstein urbanism. In Mary Shelley’s novel,
Frankenstein’s creature kills its creator and dies alone, but today, with the majority of
cities far from reaching their final form, a positive finale is still possible.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Cian O’Callaghan, Patrick Bresnihan, Cesare Di Feliciantonio, Kevin Ward, Rob
Kitchin & the Programmable City team, Jamie Peck and the six anonymous referees, for their precious
comments on early drafts of the paper.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article: The European Union, the Royal Geographical Society (Dudley Stamp
Memorial Award), the University of Manchester and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Note
1. The amount of this percentage is the same as the amount of shares that the Masdar Initiative has in
that clean-tech project. As a representative from the Masdar Initiative explained in an interview,
‘typically if it is a local partner from the GCC Area (Gulf Cooperation Council), Masdar will be the
majority shareholder, meaning 60% to 40% ownership. If the development of a new technology is
conducted with an international partner, the ownership will vary from 30% to 40%’.

References
Aina YA (2017) Achieving smart sustainable cities with GeoICT support: The Saudi evolving smart
cities. Cities 71: 49–58.
Anderson B and McFarlane C (2011) Assemblage and geography. Area 43(2): 124–127.
Barcelona City Council (2017) BCN Smart City [Online]. Available at: http://smartcity.bcn.cat/en
(accessed 20 July 2017).
16 Environment and Planning A 0(0)

Batty M (2012) Building a science of cities. Cities 29: S9–S16.

Benevolo L (1993) The European City. Oxford: Blackwell.
Bettencourt L and West G (2010) A unified theory of urban living. Nature 467(7318): 912–913.
Brenner N and Theodore N (2002) Cities and the geographies of ‘‘actually existing neoliberalism’’.
Antipode 34(3): 349–379.
Bulkeley H and Castán Broto V (2013) Government by experiment? Global cities and the governing of
climate change. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 38(3): 361–375.
Bulkeley H, Castán Broto V and Maassen A (2014) Low-carbon transitions and the reconfiguration of
urban infrastructure. Urban Studies 51(7): 1471–1486.
Calabi D (2001) La citta’ del primo Rinascimento. Laterza, Roma-Bari.
Calzada I and Cobo C (2015) Unplugging: Deconstructing the smart city. Journal of Urban Technology
22(1): 23–43.
Caprotti F (2014) Critical research on eco-cities? A walk through the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City,
China. Cities 36: 10–17.
Caprotti F (2016) Eco-Cities and the Transition to Low Carbon Economies. Berlin: Springer.
Caprotti F and Cowley R (2016a) Interrogating urban experiments. Urban Geography 38(9):
1441–1450.
Caprotti F and Cowley R (2016b) Smart Cities UK 2016 [Online]. Available at: www.smart-eco-cities.
org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Kings-College-London-UK-Smart-Cities-Survey-2016-summary.
pdf (accessed 20 July 2017).
Caragliu A, Del Bo C and Nijkamp P (2011) Smart cities in Europe. Journal of Urban Technology
18(2): 65–82.
Castán Broto V and Bulkeley H (2013) A survey of urban climate change experiments in 100 cities.
Global Environmental Change 23(1): 92–102.
Census and Statistics Department (2017) Hong Kong Population [Online]. Available at: www.censtatd.
gov.hk/home/ (accessed 20 July 2017).
Chan EH, Tang BS and Wong WS (2002) Density control and the quality of living space: A case study
of private housing development in Hong Kong. Habitat International 26(2): 159–175.
Chang ICC (2017) Failure matters: Reassembling eco-urbanism in a globalizing China. Environment
and Planning A 49(8): 1719–1742.
Chang ICC and Sheppard E (2013) China’s eco-cities as variegated urban sustainability: Dongtan Eco-
City and Chongming Eco-Island. Journal of Urban Technology 20(1): 57–75.
Cheung AB (2000) New interventionism in the making: Interpreting state interventions in Hong Kong
after the change of sovereignty. Journal of Contemporary China 9(24): 291–308.
Chiang YH and Tang BS (2003) ‘Submarines don’t leak, why do buildings?’ Building quality,
technological impediment and organization of the building industry in Hong Kong. Habitat
International 27(1): 1–17.
Colding J and Barthel S (2017) An urban ecology critique on the ‘‘Smart City’’ model. Journal of
Cleaner Production 164: 95–101.
Coletta C, Heaphy L and Kitchin R (2017) From the accidental to articulated smart city: The creation
and work of ‘Smart Dublin’. Available at: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/93ga5
Commerce and Economic Development Bureau (2013) Smarter Hong Kong Smarter Living [Online].
Available at: www.digital21.gov.hk/eng/relatedDoc/download/2014D21S-booklet.pdf (accessed 20
July 2017).
Conforti C (2005) La citta’ del tardo Rinascimento. Roma-Bari: Laterza.
Cortés H (2004) Five Letters 1519–1526 (Vol. 10). London: Routledge.
Cowley R, Joss S and Dayot Y (2017) The smart city and its publics: Insights from across six UK cities.
Urban Research & Practice http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17535069.2017.1293150.
Crot L (2013) Planning for sustainability in non-democratic polities: The case of Masdar city. Urban
Studies 50(13): 2809–2825.
Cugurullo F (2013a) How to build a sandcastle: An analysis of the genesis and development of Masdar
City. Journal of Urban Technology 20(1): 23–37.
Cugurullo 17

Cugurullo F (2013b) The business of Utopia: Estidama and the road to the sustainable city. Utopian
Studies 24(1): 66–88.
Cugurullo F (2016a) Urban eco-modernisation and the policy context of new eco-city projects: Where
Masdar City fails and why. Urban Studies 53(11): 2417–2433.
Cugurullo F (2016b) Speed kills: Fast urbanism and endangered sustainability in the Masdar City
project. In: Datta A and Shaban A (eds) Mega-Urbanization in the Global South: Fast Cities and
New Urban Utopias of the Postcolonial State. London: Routledge.
Cugurullo F (2017) The story does not remain the same: multi-scalar perspectives on sustainable urban
development in Asia and Hong Kong. In: Caprotti F and Yu L (eds) Sustainable Cities in Asia.
London: Routledge.
Datta A (2015) New urban utopias of postcolonial India ‘Entrepreneurial urbanization’ in Dholera
smart city, Gujarat. Dialogues in Human Geography 5(1): 3–22.
Davis M and Monk DB(2008) Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism. New York: The New
Press.
De Jong M, Joss S, Schraven D, et al. (2015) Sustainable–smart–resilient–low carbon–eco–knowledge
cities; making sense of a multitude of concepts promoting sustainable urbanization. Journal of
Cleaner Production 109: 25–38.
De Jong M, Wang D and Yu C (2013) Exploring the relevance of the eco-city concept in China: The
case of Shenzhen Sino-Dutch Low Carbon City. Journal of Urban Technology 20(1): 95–113.
Evans J (2016) Trials and tribulations: Problematizing the city through/as urban experimentation.
Geography Compass 10(10): 429–443.
Evans J and Karvonen A (2011) Living laboratories for sustainability: Exploring the politics and
epistemology of urban transition. In: Bulkeley H, Castán Broto V, Hodson M, et al. (eds) Cities and
Low Carbon Transitions. London: Routledge, pp. 126–141.
Evans J and Karvonen A (2014) ‘Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Lower Your Carbon
Footprint!’—Urban laboratories and the governance of low-carbon futures. International Journal
of Urban and Regional Research 38(2): 413–430.
Evans J, Karvonen A and Raven R (eds) (2016) The Experimental City. London: Routledge.
Ferraris A, Erhardt N and Bresciani S (2017) Ambidextrous work in smart city project alliances:
Unpacking the role of human resource management systems. The International Journal of Human
Resource Management http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2017.1291530.
Fishman R (1982) Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Foster and Partners (2007) Masdar Development [Online]. Available at: www.fosterandpartners.com/
projects/masdar-development/ (accessed 20 July 2017).
Francesch-Huidobro M (2012) Institutional deficit and lack of legitimacy: The challenges of climate
change governance in Hong Kong. Environmental Politics 21(5): 791–810.
Garau C, Masala F and Pinna F (2016) Cagliari and smart urban mobility: Analysis and comparison.
Cities 56: 35–46.
Gardner N and Hespanhol L (2017) SMLXL: Scaling the smart city, from metropolis to individual.
City, Culture and Society. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ccs.2017.06.006.
Haila A (2000) Real estate in global cities: Singapore and Hong Kong as property states. Urban Studies
37(12): 2241–2256.
Hashem IAT, Chang V, Anuar NB, et al. (2016) The role of big data in smart city. International
Journal of Information Management 36(5): 748–758.
He C, Liu Z, Tian J, et al. (2014) Urban expansion dynamics and natural habitat loss in China: A
multiscale landscape perspective. Global Change Biology 20(9): 2886–2902.
Higgins P (2013) From sustainable development to carbon control: Urban transformation in Hong
Kong and London. Journal of Cleaner Production 50: 56–67.
Hong Kong Government (2012) The Gini Coefficient of Hong Kong: Trends and Interpretations
[Online]. Available at: www.hkeconomy.gov.hk/en/pdf/box-12q2-5-2.pdf (accessed 20 July 2017).
IBM Hong Kong (2017) Smarter Cities [Online]. Available at: www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/hk/en/
smarter_cities/overview/?re¼spf (accessed 20 July 2017).
18 Environment and Planning A 0(0)

Index of Economic Freedom (2017) Country Rankings [Online]. Available at: www.heritage.org/index/
ranking (accessed 20 July 2017).
Joss S, Cook M and Dayot Y (2017) Smart cities: Towards a new citizenship regime? A discourse
analysis of the British Smart City Standard. Journal of Urban Technology. DOI: 10.1080/
10630732.2017.1336027.
Joss S, Tomoseiu D and Cowley R (2011) Eco-Cities — A Global Survey 2011 [Online]. Available at:
www.westminster.ac.uk/?a¼119909 (accessed 20 July 2017).
Kaika M (2017) ‘‘Don’t call me Resilient Again!’’ The new urban agenda as immunology . . . or what
happens when communities refuse to be vaccinated with ‘smart cities’ and indicators. Environment
and Urbanization 29(1): 89–102. DOI: 10.1177/0956247816684763.
Karvonen A, Evans J and van Heur B (2013) The politics of urban experiments: Radical change or
business as usual? In: Marvin S and Hodson M (eds) After Sustainable Cities. London: Routledge,
pp. 105–114.
Karvonen A and van Heur B (2014) Urban laboratories: Experiments in reworking cities. International
Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38: 379–392.
Kitchin R (2014) The real-time city? Big data and smart urbanism. GeoJournal 79(1): 1–14.
Kruft HW (1989) Städte in Utopia: Die Idealstadt vom 15. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert zwischen
Staatsutopie und Wirklichkeit. Munich: CH Beck.
Kummitha RKR and Crutzen N (2017) How do we understand smart cities? An evolutionary
perspective. Cities 67: 43–52.
Lai K (2012) Differentiated markets: Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong in China’s financial centre
network. Urban Studies 49(6): 1275–1296.
Leszczynski A (2016) Speculative futures: Cities, data, and governance beyond smart urbanism.
Environment and Planning A 48(9): 1691–1708.
Linz JJ and Stepan A (1996) Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe,
South America, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Long H, Liu Y, Hou X, et al. (2014) Effects of land use transitions due to rapid urbanization on
ecosystem services: Implications for urban planning in the new developing area of China. Habitat
International 44: 536–544.
LSE Cities (2011) Hong Kong’s Housing Shame [Online]. Available at: https://lsecities.net/media/
objects/articles/hong-kong/en-gb/ (accessed 20 July 2017).
Luomi M (2009) Abu Dhabi’s alternative-energy initiatives: Seizing climate-change opportunities.
Middle East Policy 16(4): 102–117.
Luque-Ayala A and Marvin S (2015) Developing a critical understanding of smart urbanism? Urban
Studies 52(12): 2105–2116.
McFarlane C (2011) The city as a machine for learning. Transactions of the Institute of British
Geographers 36(3): 360–376.
McGuirk P, Dowling R and Bulkeley H (2014) Repositioning urban governments? Energy efficiency
and Australia’s changing climate and energy governance regimes. Urban Studies 51(13): 2717–2734.
DOI: 10.1177/0042098014533732.
McLean A, Bulkeley H and Crang M (2015) Negotiating the urban smart grid: Socio-technical
experimentation in the city of Austin. Urban Studies 53(15): 3246–3263. DOI: 10.1177/
0042098015612984.
McNeill D (2015) Global firms and smart technologies: IBM and the reduction of cities. Transactions
of the Institute of British Geographers 40(4): 562–574.
March H and Ribera-Fumaz R (2016) Smart contradictions: The politics of making Barcelona a self-
sufficient city. European Urban and Regional Studies 23(4): 816–830.
Masdar Initiative (2017a) Sustainability [Online]. Available at: http://www.masdar.ae/en/masdar-city/
the-built-environment (accessed 20 July 2017).
Masdar Initiative (2017b) About Masdar City [Online]. Available at: www.masdar.ae/assets/
downloads/content/270/masdar_city_brochure.pdf (accessed 20 July 2017).
Cugurullo 19

Milano Smart City (2017) Smart Milano [Online]. Available at: www.milanosmartcity.org/joomla/
(accessed 20 February 2017).
Mosannenzadeh F, Bisello A, Vaccaro R, et al. (2017) Smart energy city development: A story told by
urban planners. Cities 64: 54–65.
Mumford L (1961) The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects. New York:
Harcourt, Brace & World.
Neirotti P, De Marco A, Cagliano AC, et al. (2014) Current trends in Smart City initiatives: Some
stylised facts. Cities 38: 25–36.
Orwell G (2004) Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Penguin.
Peck J (2017) Transatlantic city. Part 1: Conjunctural urbanism. Urban Studies 54(1): 4–30.
0042098016679355.
Peck J (2017) Transatlantic city. Part 2: Late entrepreneurialism. Urban Studies 54(2): 327–363.
Peck J, Theodore N and Brenner N (2013) Neoliberal urbanism redux? International Journal of Urban
and Regional Research 37(3): 1091–1099.
Peng X, Shi D, Guo H, et al. (2015) Effect of urbanisation on the water retention function in the Three
Gorges Reservoir Area, China. Catena 133: 241–249.
Qiu B, Li H, Zhou M, et al. (2015) Vulnerability of ecosystem services provisioning to urbanization: A
case of China. Ecological Indicators 57: 505–513.
Raco M and Street E (2012) Resilience planning, economic change and the politics of post-recession
development in London and Hong Kong. Urban Studies 49(5): 1065–1087.
Rapoport E (2014) Utopian visions and real estate dreams: The eco-city past, present and future.
Geography Compass 8: 137–149.
Rapoport E and Hult A (2017) The travelling business of sustainable urbanism: International
consultants as norm-setters. Environment and Planning A 49(8): 1779–1796. DOI:
0308518X16686069.
Register R (1987) Ecocity Berkeley: Building Cities for a Healthy Future. Berkeley: North Atlantic
Books.
Register R (2006) Ecocities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature. Gabriola Island: New Society
Publishers.
Rosenau H (1983) The Ideal City in its Architectural Evolution. London: Methuen & Co.
Rosol M, Béal V and Mössner S (2017) Greenest cities? The (post-) politics of new urban
environmental regimes. Environment and Planning A 49(8): 1710–1718.
Shelley M (2013) Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus. London: Penguin.
Shelton B, Karakiewicz J and Kvan T (2013) The Making of Hong Kong: From Vertical to Volumetric.
London: Routledge.
Shelton T, Zook M and Wiig A (2015) The ‘actually existing smart city’. Cambridge Journal of Regions,
Economy and Society 8(1): 13–25.
Shen J (2008) Hong Kong under Chinese sovereignty: Economic relations with mainland China, 1978–
2007. Eurasian Geography and Economics 49(3): 326–340.
Smart City Wien (2017) Framework Strategy [Online]. Available at: https://smartcity.wien.gv.at/site/
en/ (accessed 20 July 2017).
Strom EA, and Mollenkopf, JH (Eds.). (2007). The urban politics reader. London: Routledge.
Swyngedouw E (2010) Apocalypse forever? Post-political populism and the spectre of climate change.
Theory, Culture & Society 27(2–3): 213–232.
Tam CM, Deng ZM, Zeng SX, et al. (2000) Quest for continuous quality improvement for public
housing construction in Hong Kong. Construction Management & Economics 18(4): 437–446.
Taylor Buck N and While A (2017) Competitive urbanism and the limits to smart city innovation: The
UK Future Cities initiative. Urban Studies 54(2): 501–519.
The Economist Intelligence Unit (2017) Business Environment – Hong Kong [Online]. Available at: http://
country.eiu.com/article.aspx?articleid¼933632677&Country¼Hong%20Kong&topic¼Business
&subtopic¼Businessþenvironment&subsubtopic¼Rankingsþoverview (accessed 20 July 2017).
20 Environment and Planning A 0(0)

The Guardian (2013) Hong Kong’s Cubicle Apartments: Could You Live Like This? [Online]. Available
at: www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2013/feb/22/hong-kong-flats-tiny-cubicles (accessed 20
July 2017).
The Guardian (2017) My Week in Lucky House: The Horror of Hong Kong’s Coffin Homes [Online].
Available at: www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/29/hong-kong-coffin-homes-horror-my-week
(accessed 20 July 2017).
Trencher G and Karvonen A (2017) Stretching ‘‘smart’’: Advancing health and well-being through the
smart city agenda. Local Environment. DOI: 10.1080/13549839.2017.1360264.
Vanolo A (2014) Smartmentality: The smart city as disciplinary strategy. Urban Studies 51(5): 883–898.
van Winden W and van den Buuse D (2017) Smart city pilot projects: Exploring the dimensions and
conditions of scaling up. Journal of Urban Technology. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2017.
1348884.
Viitanen J and Kingston R (2014) Smart cities and green growth: Outsourcing democratic and
environmental resilience to the global technology sector. Environment and Planning A 46(4):
803–819.
Wan L, Ye X, Lee J, et al. (2015) Effects of urbanization on ecosystem service values in a mineral
resource-based city. Habitat International 46: 54–63.
Washburn D, Sindhu U, Balaouras S, et al. (2009) Helping CIOs understand ‘‘smart city’’ initiatives.
Growth 17(2): 1–17.
Wiig A (2016) The empty rhetoric of the smart city: From digital inclusion to economic promotion in
Philadelphia. Urban Geography 37(4): 535–553.
Wong TKY and Wan PS (2009) Lingering environmental pessimism and the role of government in
Hong Kong. Public Administration and Development 29(5): 441–451.
World Bank (2017) CO2 Emissions – Hong Kong SAR [Online]. Available at: http://data.worldbank.
org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC/countries/HK–XR?display¼graph (accessed 20 July 2017).
World Wide Fund (2015) Marine – Hong Kong [Online]. Available at: www.wwf.org.hk/en/whatwedo/
conservation/marine/ (accessed 20 July 2017).
Wu Y, Zhang W, Shen J, et al. (2017) Smart city with Chinese characteristics against the background
of big data: Idea, action and risk. Journal of Cleaner Production. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.
2017.01.047.
Yin C, Xiong Z, Chen H, et al. (2015) A literature survey on smart cities. Science China Information
Sciences 58(10): 1–18.
Zygiaris S (2013) Smart city reference model: Assisting planners to conceptualize the building of smart
city innovation ecosystems. Journal of the Knowledge Economy 4(2): 217–231.

View publication stats