Terrains of care in the smart city: sensemaking by creative communities of practice

Critical smart city research has presented wide-ranging risks of technocentric urban development. One critique lies in the kinds of citizenship directed under smart urban paradigms, which do little to account for residents’ practices of care. This paper is an ethico-onto-epistemological re-examination of smart cities through the lens of care practices specifically focusing on creative communities of practice. We use an enactivist empirical approach to help uncover experiences of sensemaking in the smart city held by three creative communities of practice in Helsinki. Through in-depth interviews with n = 22 urban planners, artists, and community space organizers, we assessed these groups’ differing and overlapping sensemaking processes. Utilizing 5E sensemaking processes (embodied, extended, enacted, emotive, and embedded) as a flexible analytical framework, we identify and interpret their practices of care as ways of sensemaking in a developing smart urban environment. Our results depict terrains of care in which participation and citizenship in the smart city is not neutral, but embedded in affective engagement, navigating rules and institutions, and cultivation of joy and inspiration. We use our findings to discuss what these interweaving terrains of care mean for citizenship and transformational change in the smart city. Highlights • We identify interweaving ‘terrains of care’ that can inform how cities can more effectively engage with citizens in transformative smart city development. • An undue emphasis on defining the smart city concept tends to reduce complexity regarding the practices that exist alongside it. • Citizenship in the smart city is not a neutral practice of participation, but rather embedded in care relations with one’s surroundings. Policy and practice recommendations The profession of smart urban planning is inherently embedded in networks of care relations, which can help promote the situated development of smart cities as a whole. Emphases on participatory processes in smart cities can be supplemented by efforts to better facilitate local care networks that are already active. Care practices are inseparable from memory and connection with space, which informs urban planning practitioners and can be better recognized in city planning work.