Sophia Maalsen keynote at the Beyond Smart Cities Today conference, Sweden, June 2022

Hacking as a minor approach that prefigures future cities: feminist approaches beyond the hegemony of the smart city

Inspired by recent work that has advanced minor approaches to smart urbanism (Leszczynski 2020; Katz 1996) this paper positions “urban hacks” (Maalsen 2021) as fruitful counter-narratives to hegemonic smart city discourses. Situated in a context of discomfort towards the limitations of major theories to account for the different experiences of the actually existing smart city, mixed with an overwhelming feeling that significant structural change has not arrived yet (and may not in the near future) despite major critiques, the hack is positioned as an “imperfect but better than” intervention to urban problems. Specifically, this paper addresses how housing affordability crises are prompting both public and private sectors to “hack” housing. I advance hacking as a form of prefigurative politics, whose ruptures show us alternative possibilities for smart cities, and whose speculative nature can become a mechanism for change.

If we are to move “beyond the smart city”, as the conference title suggests, then it is necessary to open ourselves (both academics and policy makers) to other ways of understanding the smart city, ways which, in their difference, show us alternative possibilities for the city.

Katz, C (1996) Towards minor theory. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 14(4): 487–499.

Leszczynski, A. (2020) ‘Glitchy vignettes of platform urbanism’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 38(2), pp. 189–208.

Maalsen, S. (2021) ‘The hack: What it is and why it matters to urban studies’, Urban Studies

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For more information about the conference and more recorded keynotes, visit: https://beyondsmartcities.se/recorded-keynotes-2/