The making of urban computing environments : borders, security and governance

This paper explores the production of urban computing environments in the context of Cape Town, South Africa. It draws on research conducted between 2015 and 2017 to understand how Cape Town has been transformed into a smart city by a series of public and private initiatives. Over the past two decades, the city has seen substantial investments in digital infrastructure, the rise of a vibrant IT industry, and the increasing datafication of urban life through smart devices, apps, and platforms, while government and corporate narratives have coined terms such as “Silicon Cape” and “Digital Gateway to Africa” to describe these shifts. In this paper, I propose two key theoretical contributions: first, I push against popular narratives of smart cities as smooth and seamless spaces, and instead point to the ways in which urban digitalization actually develops through bordering processes. Second, I describe how the governance of smart cities is informed by preemptive politics and forms of speculative security.