At the heart of this book lies a troubling, yet crucial question: how to reconcile the rapid and expansive adoption of various smart technologies that are envisioned as environmentally beneficial, with the extensive environmental harms brought on by digitisation itself? Taking smart cities as one example of such complex relations between digital technologies and the environment, the book offers a paradigm- shifting approach to this conundrum. Instead of accepting the promise of digitisation to improve sustainability, support the environment, and help combat climate change – a promise that underpins many policies, popular representations and much of the academic work on smart cities – the book demonstrates that the promise itself is fundamentally broken. We use the notion of broken promises as a conceptual framework and as a lens to tell a different story about smart cities – and, in doing so, also to pave ways for a new understanding of the narratives, imaginaries, and the material and socio- economic arrangements that configure the relation between technology, human practices, and the environment more broadly.

The hyper- visible and the invisible environment in smart cities

The idea of a ‘smart city’ often includes the promise of environmental sustainability, healthy living, and clean energy. These and other environmental benefits are believed to be possible because smart cities are seen as simultaneously green and efficient. Although ecological and climate concerns are rarely the primary focus of smart cities – to the point where many scholars explicitly distinguish between the frameworks of ‘smart cities’ which focus on urban efficiency and ‘eco cities’ which prioritise ecological values – many of the world's smart cities’ public- facing narratives, such as policy documents or websites, nevertheless tell a story of how smart cities and the digital technologies they draw on, would ultimately make the environment better. They would streamline the collection of waste by using sensor- equipped smart bins which would reduce the driving times of bin collectors; deploy smartphone- operated bike- rental schemes which would replace cars with cycling; monitor air pollution and improve air quality via sophisticated traffic planning; manage city activities and services via publicly shared digital dashboards; and run paper- free e- government services which would reduce deforestation and paper waste.