Alejandra Linares-Figueruelo

https://doi.org/10.66428/ijppv16i02a003

Details

Alejandra Linares-Figueruelo
Universitat de Barcelona, C/ de la Magdalena 4 28012 Madrid – alejandra.lf@hotmail.es

Keywords: Smart urbanism, Planning governance, Cultural infrastructure, Legitimacy, Satellite Museums

Abstract: Smart urbanism is commonly framed as a technological project centred around data infrastructure, digital platforms, and innovation systems. This framing obscures a consequential dimension: smart urbanism functions as a governance rationality that reorganises planning authority, legitimacy, and coordination. This article reframes smart urbanism as a problem of governance rather than technology, foregrounding cultural infrastructures as sites where epistemic authority and planning operability are assembled and contested. Focusing on satellite museums as institutionally mobile cultural infrastructures, the paper examines how delegated cultural authority becomes usable – or fails to become usable – within planning regimes. The analysis adopts a comparative, document-centred methodology grounded in policy mobility and relational planning. It examines two cases: the aborted Hermitage Barcelona project and the West Bund–Centre Pompidou partnership in Shanghai. Holding the satellite museum constant, the comparison identifies two governance configurations. Participatory accountability and fragmented authorisation in Barcelona create a legitimacy environment that leaves operability vulnerable to withdrawal. In Shanghai, administrative designation and mandate continuity stabilise legitimacy. The findings demonstrate that smart urbanism operates as a regime of legitimacy management rather than a toolkit for optimisation and that cultural infrastructure redistributes exposure within planning systems. The article contributes a governance-centred diagnosis of smart urbanism that resists diffusionist and performance frameworks.