Search results

This chapter works with Lefebvre’s “Right to the City” (1996b) to understand how a Smart City initiative was being implemented and as a consequence who benefitted. While a model of citizenship is offered in smart cities, the “actually existing” smart city in fact reconfigures models of citizenship in ways that instrumentalize technology and data that can reinforce the patterns of exclusion for marginalized groups. Therefore, this chapter aims to understand how citizens participate in smart city projects and whether they can in fact lead to the exacerbation of existing urban historical, material, and social inequalities. The chapter focuses on some of those excluded by smart city projects: the urban poor, street traders, and those who live in informal settlements and explores the way in which they access and participate in the city. In the Global South context, India is a key actor in implementing a national-level smart city program, and research was undertaken in the city of Chennai to investigate the way that the India Smart Cities Mission was being planned and implemented and the corresponding implications for marginalized communities. The chapter argues that there is a need to recognize the value of a range of everyday, small-scale ways in which citizens employ technologies and data that meet their needs in a social and spatially embedded context. In this way, marginalized people may be empowered to have what Lefebvre describes as “the right to the oeuvre, to participation and appropriation” (1996, p. 173) in urban space.

Eugene Meyer governed the Federal Reserve Board during most of the Great Contraction. Yet his role and import are almost unknown. He was not misguided by incorrect policy indicators or the real bills doctrine; the usual explanations for the failure of monetary policy. Meyer urged the adoption of expansionary policies and created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to assist banks, especially nonmembers. However, the diffusion of power enabled the district bank Governors to stifle his efforts, although an expansionary policy was finally adopted in 1932. His unquestioning commitment to gold and lack of operational authority are the reasons policy failed.

This chapter provides an introduction to the smart city and engages with its idea and ideals from a critical social science perspective. After setting out in brief the emergence of smart cities and current key debates, we note a number of practical, political, and normative questions relating to citizenship, social justice, and the public good that warrant examination. The remainder of the chapter provides an initial framing for engaging with these questions. The first section details the dominant neoliberal conception and enactment of smart cities and how this works to promote the interests of capital and state power and reshape governmentality. We then detail some of the more troubling ethical issues associated with smart city technologies and initiatives. Having set out some of the more troubling aspects of how social relations are produced within smart cities, we then examine how citizens and citizenship have been conceived and operationalized in the smart city to date. We then follow this with a discussion of social justice and the smart city. In the fifth section, we explore the notion of the “right to the smart city” and how this might be used to recast the smart city in emancipatory and empowering ways. Finally, we set out how the book seeks to answer our questions and extend our initial framing, exploring the extent to which the “right to the city” should be a fundamental principle of smart city endeavors.

A NEW YEAR is a season of Stocktaking in normal times; this year it is especially so. The library journals of the world all fill their pages with discussions on libraries in a time of economic depression and financial stringency; and in America this note is even more Stressed than in any country, and we trust that some good may come of it seeing that America has proved more helpless in the face of world depression than any nation had thought possible. That, however, is by the way. The immediate problem of the New Year is how to ensure that in the general reductions of expenditure that are being made the expenditure on libraries is reduced as little as possible.

Poets House, a poetry special collection in New York, hosts an annual exhibit of the preceding year's poetry publications in the USA. This paper aims to offer a selection of recommended titles that reflect the range of poetry titles including single‐author works, anthologies, and prose about poetry.

The paper researched and requested donations of 2010‐2011 poetry titles from US poetry publishers to assemble and display a comprehensive collection of poetry publications, from which a selection of 50 titles was made. The selections should appeal to a range of poetry readers, from novices and students to poets looking to access the latest work from their peers.

Over 2,500 poetry titles were published and/or available to readers in the USA between June 2010 and June 2011. These titles range from mainstream publishers to independent presses to artists' collectives publishing works from established poets as well as emerging and international poets.

Without a budget for collection development, the exhibit and resulting titles represent those which publishers have opted to donate to the library. Every effort is made to be all‐inclusive, with the understanding that publishers may send only a selection of their list. The selected titles herein are based on the titles received for the exhibition.

For 19 years Poets House's annual Showcase has been the main collection‐development tool. Publishers donate copies of their titles, which are arranged by publisher for a month‐long exhibition. This approach enriches the poetry special collection, a unique poetry library built on community participation. The all‐inclusive collection‐development approach results in a full representation of poetry publishing.

A selection made from a comprehensive collection of the year's poetry titles offers a sample of poetry publishing from large to small presses and the self‐published in the USA.

This column aims to take a brief look at wayfinding in the digital age, and explores several opportunities that are on the horizon for libraries that could enhance the user experience for their patrons.

This column provides a survey of the current views of wayfinding in the digital age.

There is new technology being developed that increasingly blurs the lines between the digital and the physical.

Devices such as the HoloLens and iBeacon, while nascent, will quickly become a standard for new approaches that people can use to interact with their environments integrating digital information. This affords libraries a unique opportunity over the course of the next 5-10 years to take advantage of this technology to assist patrons with their information needs.