The myth of smart city as a form of inclusive development: the case of Smart City Istanbul

(1)

MSc Thesis

International Development Studies

The myth of smart city as a form of

inclusive development:

the case of Smart City Istanbul

by Irmak Ekin Karel

Student number 12636053

Email address

irmakekinkarel@windowslive.com

Graduate School Graduate School of Social Sciences

Supervisor & First Reader Dr. Hebe Verrest

Second Reader Dr. Christine Richter

Submission date and place 17/08/2020, Amsterdam

Picture source: https://safesmart.city/en/istanbul-smart-city-journey/?doing_wp_cron=1597502411.9867711067199707031250

(2)

(3)

Karel 1

Acknowledgements

The eight months that I devoted to this fieldwork and thesis project involved the precious time and effort of various individuals. First, I wish to express my gratitude to my supervisor Hebe Verrest, who not just guided me in my thinking, but also shared with me moments of excitement and frustration in times of Covid-19. It was a true pleasure to get to know such an inspiring person and scholar and be able to count on her support through countless Zoom meetings and email exchanges. Second, I want to thank former UNDP colleagues and fellow Istanbulites Aslihan Albostan and Onur Atac for helping me to navigate through the emerging smart city ecosystem in Istanbul. Without your help, I would not have been able to do all the interviews I wanted to do. Third, I want to extend a huge thank you to each and every one of my interviewees for trusting me, taking the time and sharing with me their invaluable experiences and views on Smart City Istanbul.

Divided between the cities of Istanbul and Amsterdam, this research process would have been impossible without the three beautiful human beings in my life that provide me with constant love and care. Anneciğim, babacığım, without your support, this master's degree would have remained a very longed dream. Thank you for believing in me, for supporting me full-heartedly in fulfilling my dreams and for being an endless source of love, strength, and comfort. Anneciğim, thank you particularly for being present in each and every moment, including the moments of despair during the lockdown period in Istanbul. You make every day a blessing. Last but not least, Álvaro, I am infinitely grateful for your constant love and dedication. There are no words to describe how I cherish your support and encouragement during every single day of writing this thesis.

(7)

Karel 5

Abstract

An increasingly prominent approach to urbanism, the concept of the smart city is based on the implicit developmental claim to improve quality of life in cities. This new approach holds that the use of high technologies makes cities more inclusive, livable and sustainable for everyone who resides in them. While beliefs about the problems of today's cities and their predefined solutions increasingly shape how cities and people are governed, the assumptions underlying the concept of smart cities remain under-researched. As the largest city in continental Europe, a megacity hosting more than 15 million inhabitants, Istanbul has adopted a smart city approach in recent years. This thesis aims to contribute to the knowledge on underlying assumptions and neoliberal undertones of smart city policies as well as their inclusiveness by examining how the design of the Smart City Istanbul (SCI) project worked towards an inclusive urban development. The thesis relies on 11 semi-structured interviews with key individuals involved in Istanbul's smart city efforts as well as on internal and public company documents, and online sources. First, the thesis finds that the key actors that shaped the design of SCI were two-folded: the local government and foreign private sector. While the former consisted of a local experts' team of IMM and its affiliate firm ISBAK, the latter mainly composed of multinational firms that provided the backbones of thinking and doing smart urbanism in the process. Second, the participation of disadvantaged groups in the smart city governance process was very limited and took place through a tokenism type of citizen participation. Third, the change of local government of Istanbul led to a reconfiguration of actors and vision of Smart City Istanbul. Fourth, this thesis shows that smart urbanism in Istanbul is an adaptation of global smart city policies that focus on resource efficiency and sustainability in cities and on the betterment of city management through the use of high technologies. While the means of smart urbanism – the integration of ICT applications as well as the collection and use of data – are clearly defined by local government representatives, SCI's key objective of improving the quality of life of all Istanbulites remains ambiguous. Fifth, the SCI does not only exclude disadvantaged groups' problems in the vision, but its focus on certain problem areas such as mobility-transportation and environment is not elaborated nor justified on the grounds of inclusive development. These findings implicate that the most influential actors with their specific interests and sociopolitical norms have the power to influence the way smart urbanism is understood and made in Istanbul. The study concludes that smart urbanism directed at economic growth as the main underlying ambition and high technologies as the means rather than an ecologically, socially, and relationally inclusive development renders Smart City Istanbul an exclusive, neoliberal, and entrepreneurial form of urbanism.

Keywords: smart city, inclusive urban development, Istanbul, Turkey, neoliberal

(8)

Karel 6

List of Figures

Figure 1: Arnstein's ladder of citizen participation ... 16

Figure 2: Conceptual scheme. ... 24

Figure 3: Overview of interviews ... 30

Figure 4: "Mega projects vs. sensitive and protected areas" ... 40

Figure 5: Governance structure of Istanbul ... 42

Figure 6: Smart City Wheel by Boyd Cohen ... 44

Figure 7: The Five Phases of Smart City Istanbul. ... 46

Figure 8: Istanbul's Smart City Ecosystem ... 64

(9)

Karel 7

List of Acronyms and Abbreviations

EY Ernst & Young EU European Union

GAF Governance Analytical Framework

ICT Information and communication technology IMM Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality

ISBAK Istanbul IT and Smart City Technologies Inc. NGO Non-governmental organization

SCI Smart City Istanbul

SDG Sustainable Development Goal UN United Nations

(10)

Karel 8

1. Introduction

1.1 Problem statement and relevance

The hype surrounding the concept of smart city has been on the rise together with related buzzwords such as innovation, digital transformation, and the 4th_{Industrial Revolution. As}

of 2019, the number of smart city projects is over 440 in around 300 cities of the world, while the annual income for the global smart city market is at around $97 billion, a number which is anticipated to more than double in the coming decade (SmartCitiesWorld 2019). The economic and geographical surge of the smart city is to be seen in the context of the rising power of big high-technology corporations, where since the late 2000s, tech giants like IBM, Microsoft, Google, and Cisco have not only produced smart technologies, but have taken an active part in the invention and global dissemination of smart city policies (Harrison & Donnelly 2011; Verrest & Pfeffer 2019). Alongside the private sector, public institutions at multiple administrative levels, have also been involved in the development of such policies. At the international scale, the renowned Smart Cities Expo World Congress in Barcelona organized annually since 2011, the United Nations (UN) initiative United for Smart Sustainable Cities established in 2016, and the most recent G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance on Technology Governance founded in 2019 showcase only a few out of numerous partnerships between the public and private sectors that emerged in the last decade.

Remarkably, these public-private partnerships endorse the smart city concept as a relevant means to the end of realizing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the New Urban Agenda, which strive for the betterment of the human wellbeing in societies in general, and in cities in particular (UN 2015, 2017). The relevance of smart city policies is understood specifically in relation to the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11, which aims to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” (ITU 2016). In line with SDG 11 in particular and the 2030 Agenda in general, one of the key characteristics of smart city policies is the commitment to the goal of improving the quality of life in cities which are facing complex issues exasperated by the rapid rates of urbanization (Albino et al. 2015: 10). Emphasizing the goal of improving the quality of urban life, the McKinsey Global Institute points out the significant contribution smart city policies could make to global development: “using the current generation of smart city applications effectively could help cities make significant or moderate progress

(11)

Karel 9

toward meeting 70 percent of the Sustainable Development Goals” (2018: 4). While the concept of smart city lacks a common definition, there is a common understanding that the primary way through which it aims to improve quality of life in cities is through the use of high technologies (ibid; Yigitcanlar et al. 2018).

The smart city concept justified on the grounds of improving urban human living through high technologies has been subject to criticism (Hollands 2014; Kitchin et al. 2016; Marvin et al. 2016; Cardullo & Kitchin 2018; Cardullo et al. 2019; Verrest & Pfeffer 2019). Critiques commonly point to technocratic, post-political, and value-free approaches that represent smart cities as “rational interventions designed to improve social, economic and governance systems” (Kitchin et al. 2016: 17). The emphasis on the post-political rationale depicts ‘smart city’ as a notion that exists outside of the stakes and norms of actors, and of power relations. Solutions designated as smart typically address particular urban problems such as traffic congestion, waste management, energy consumption, urban security, and inefficiency of public services (McKinsey Global Institute 2018). From a critical perspective, the depiction of these problems as the problems raises the question of who gets to decide what the most pressing issues of cities and their dwellers are. In other words, “‘smart’ is not a neutral descriptor bestowed upon urban settings. Instead, it is a valuable adjective that is actively pursued by a variety of institutions and actors, who have different and overlapping stakes in ‘be(com)ing’ smart” (Engelbert et al. 2019: 348). Hence, these critiques emphasize that despite their representation as value-free and post-political, both the process of becoming a smart city, as well as the content of what a smart city is, are highly political.

A further related critique is the neoliberal characteristic of the smart city. In their book, Cardullo and others (2019) argue that smart city is a neoliberal type of urbanism that prioritizes the interests of a small group of profit-seeking corporations at the expense of the larger society, and especially disadvantaged groups. Neoliberal smart urbanism is based on the discourse of smart growth, which refers to the belief that knowledge economy based on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) generates wealth and makes cities more competitive (Verrest & Pfeffer 2019: 1330-1331). Similarly, Yigitcanlar et al. (2018: 1,2) highlight that smart cities are considered drivers of economic development in today’s Fourth Industrial Revolution through their ability to attract innovation, while Caragliu et al. (2011) demonstrate the positive correlation between the use of smart city indicators and urban economic growth. Although these authors point to

(12)

Karel 10

the positive relationship between smart urbanism and urban economic growth, against the backdrop of increasing global inequalities (Doyle & Stiglitz 2014; Piketty 2014; Lawson et al. 2019), the idea that economic growth improves all urbanites’ quality of life has been contested by both inclusive development scholars and scholars of critical urbanism. The theory of inclusive development, which is based on a social justice perspective, points out the socially and environmentally exclusive character of economic-growth-centred development practices that come at the expense of the wellbeing, particularly of disadvantaged groups (Gupta et al. 2015c; Gupta & Vegelin 2016; McGregor & Pouw 2016). Opposing the developmental claim of smart city policies that promise a better, more livable, sustainable, and inclusive present and future for all urbanites, critical urban scholars point out the exclusive character of the smart city concept, which “in fact contributes to a lack of participation for those who arguably should be the beneficiaries of smart city initiatives: the urban poor and marginalized groups” (Willis 2019: 31). Indeed, critical experts from the development sector also highlight that the agenda of smart cities “has further entrenched inequities within cities rather than equalizing the urban experience” (Boyle & Bradley 2018). While smart city policies aim at a better quality of life for everyone, it is unclear who, i.e. which social groups, are targeted by these policies, as well as what the improvement of quality of life implies, and how smart city policies can work towards that end.

Against the background of a call for an inclusive, and just urban development beyond the mainstream economic-growth-centred development paradigm, it is of immediate social relevance to deconstruct smart city policies’ supposed aim of advancing everyone’s lives beyond the understanding of urban development as economic development. The assumptions regarding smart cities, including the representation of specific problems as the most pressing problems, are shaping the discourses and policies through which cities and their various dwellers are governed (Kitchin et al. 2016; Verrest & Pfeffer 2019), and yet, their underlying assumptions and consequences remain under-researched (Marvin et al. 2016; Verrest & Pfeffer 2019). For this reason, the developmental claim of smart city policies directed at improving the quality of urban life for everyone should be closely examined from a critical, inclusive development perspective, and tested against its inclusiveness.

(13)

Karel 11

1.2 Focus

The focus of this thesis is on the case of Istanbul as a smart city. One of the first cities in Turkey to adopt smart urbanism, Istanbul’s smart city project called Smart City Istanbul (SCI) initiated four years ago in 2016 under the leadership of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesi, IMM) and its affiliate company Istanbul IT and Smart City Technologies Inc (ISBAK). According to an interview with ISBAK’s former director, the project has the objective of “tak[ing] the city to upper levels in all areas of life with continuing studies in functional focus areas such as management, economy, mobility, environment, human and life” (Daily Sabah 2017). Little is known about the process as well as the underlying motives of the project that claims to improve the quality of life of more than 15 million Istanbulites.

As such, the goal of this research is to understand how Istanbul was designed as a smart city through particular understandings of smart urbanism by the key actors involved, and how this vision reflects an inclusive development. At the end of the research, I hope to be able to contribute to the field of inclusive development studies in general, and to the field of ‘critical’ (Verrest & Pfeffer 2019) or ‘genuinely humanizing’ smart urbanism (Kitchin et al. 2019) in particular.

1.3 Main research question and sub-questions

To that end, the research question that leads this thesis is: How does the design of

Smart City Istanbul aspire to an inclusive urban development?

The design of the Smart City Istanbul project has two constituent elements. On the one hand, the design points to the governance process of the project, i.e. how the project came into being. On the other hand, the project’s design comprises a vision of smart urbanism, i.e. the strategic content of the smart city project. While these constituents are closely interconnected, in order to make the thesis structure more comprehensible, the sub-questions, as well as the empirical data chapters, follow this two-fold understanding of the design of Smart City Istanbul.

1. The governance process of the Smart City Istanbul project

a. Through which processes did the Smart City Istanbul project came into being, who were the key actors involved, and what roles did they play?

(14)

Karel 12

b. Were disadvantaged groups included in the making, if yes, which groups and in which nodal points of the process?

c. How has the local government change in Istanbul influenced the governance process?

2. The vision of the Smart City Istanbul project

a. How is the concept of smart city envisioned by the key actors, and what are its underlying ambitions?

b. How does the Smart City Istanbul vision involve disadvantaged groups' problems?

1.4 Thesis structure

The structure of the thesis is as follows. Chapter 2 provides a theoretical framework based on the key concepts of inclusive development, governance and smart urbanism. Chapter 3 presents how the research was carried out from the beginning to the end and discusses ethical and methodological reflections regarding the research design. Chapter 4 gives a contextual overview of Istanbul, including its key features, issues of inclusive development, and governance structure. Then, building on the previous chapters, Chapter 5 explores the processes through which the Smart City Istanbul project came into being and the actors who were involved in its making. Herein, it questions the participation of disadvantaged groups. Chapter 6 builds on useful insights from Chapter 5 and analyzes key actors’ envisioning of smart urbanism, including the definition, means, ambitions, and urban problems that this envisioning embeds. Finally, Chapter 7 discusses the research findings, answers the main research question and concludes with theoretical reflections and recommendations for fellow researchers.

(15)

Karel 13

2. Theoretical framework

2.1 Inclusive development

The broader theoretical lens through which this thesis addresses the issue of urban inequalities and disadvantaged groups concerning smart urbanism is the lens of inclusive development. The theory of inclusive development is based on a social justice1_{and human}

rights perspective and is “a countervailing discourse to that of neoliberal capitalism” (Gupta et al. 2015a: 18). It focuses on improving the quality of life of everyone across communities, cities, and countries, and emphasizes the inclusion of disadvantaged groups (Gupta et al. 2015b; Gupta et al. 2015d; Gupta et al. 2015c; Hickey et al. 2015; Gupta & Vegelin 2016). For Gupta and others, inclusive development is “development that includes marginalized people, sectors and countries in social, political and economic processes for increased human wellbeing, social and environmental sustainability, and empowerment” (Gupta et al. 2015c: 546). In a similar manner – although missing Gupta and others’ emphasis on the Anthropocene –, Hickey and others define inclusive development as “a process that occurs when social and material benefits are equitably distributed across divides within societies, across income groups, genders, ethnicities, regions, religious groups, and others” (2015). The theory of inclusive development points to today’s neoliberal politics that is widening the socio-economic gap in society, and devote attention to the inequalities that are a substantial obstacle for the wellbeing of disadvantaged groups2_{(Gupta et al. 2015c: 553). It criticizes the mainstream development narrative that}

upholds trade-offs in favor of economic growth and at the expense of vulnerable parts of the society and the environment and calls for a just, and inclusive development at international, national, and city levels (ibid).

Taking into account these elements and building on Gupta and others’ work, for the purpose of this thesis, I conceptualize inclusive development in three dimensions. These dimensions are ecological, social, and relational inclusiveness. Ecological inclusiveness

1_{In general, social justice is concerned with fairness and people’s moral rights: “those things that} we as members of a society expect as members, such as freedom and expression, access to accommodation, to vote in elections, full recourse to the law, access to education and medical treatment, etc.” (Kitchin et al. 2019: 12).

2_{I refer to the social groups who share the resources and risks of the city most disproportionately,} the ones who are at the center of inclusive development, as disadvantaged or vulnerable groups. The terms vulnerable and disadvantaged groups refer to the same social groups since vulnerabilities and disadvantages go hand in hand in societies (United Nations 2016) . Therefore, both terms are used interchangeably throughout this thesis.

(16)

Karel 14

refers to the unequal share of ecological resources and risks. It includes access to and ownership of ecological resources, equitable allocation of rights, responsibilities and risks regarding issues like climate change and natural disasters, as well as the participation of stakeholders in framing and defining these issues (Gupta & Vegelin 2016: 438-439). Relational inclusiveness points to institutionalized inequalities between the rich and the poor. A special focus is on the management of public and merit goods in a way that, for instance, the privatization of the latter does not jeopardize people in need of these goods. The rule of law as a mechanism to protect the interests of all parties is also relevant in this dimension (ibid: 439-440). Relational inclusiveness also links to the concept of governmentality as it highlights the structural elements, like underlying norms and techniques that sustain these inequalities (see Section 2.2).

Social inclusiveness refers to the inclusion of the poorest people – people seen as being at highest levels of vulnerability in terms of lack of opportunities to develop – and their inclusion regardless of class, gender, ethnicity and age (ibid: 436). This entails the provision of minimum living standards such as access to amenities like water and sanitation, and infrastructures like mobility and education. Capacity building for the most marginalized for employment opportunities is also deemed crucial. An important role here is given to the participation of poor people via sharing their experiences to co-define the problems and issues at stake (ibid). The social inclusiveness dimension of inclusive development is comparable to the concept of social inclusion in the UN’s recent inclusive development report, which defines social inclusion as “the process of improving the terms of participation in society for people who are disadvantaged on the basis of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, or economic or other status, through enhanced opportunities, access to resources, voice and respect for rights” (UN 2016).

Arguably, all social, ecological, and relational dimensions of inclusive development are concerned with two distinct connotations of inclusion: (1) the participation of disadvantaged groups themselves in regular governance processes of the city in general, and (2) authorities’ deliberate inclusion of disadvantaged groups and/or their problems in selected governance processes and projects through the use of participatory methods. In the following, firstly, I draw on to the right to the city concept to elaborate on the former. Secondly, in order to expand on what deliberate citizen inclusion by traditional power-holders such as the local government in governance processes and projects can mean, I

(17)

Karel 15

present Arnstein’s (1969) ladder of citizen participation. While they bear overlapping and distinctive elements, both the right to the city and the ladder of citizen participation concepts serve this thesis to demarcate what inclusion in the case of Smart City Istanbul can mean.

2.1.1 The right to the city

The right to the city, as coined by Lefebvre and expanded by Harvey, is based on a Marxist theory of social justice (Kitchin et al. 2019: 12). This approach suggests a reorganization of the class-based socio-economic structure of society and a change in current modes of production and consumption so that every individual is taken care of, and in urban terms, has a ‘right to the city’ (ibid: 14-15). According to Harvey (Harvey 2008), the right to the city means “claim[ing] some kind of shaping power over the processes of urbanization, over the ways in which our cities are made and re-made and to do so in a fundamental and radical way”. This right is not an individual right, but a collective right and should be claimed through a collective power (ibid: 1). Thus, the right to the city is about how disadvantaged groups should take part in the making of the city, and not about how they should be included in predetermined outcomes: it is “not about inclusion in a structurally unequal and exploitative system, but about democratizing cities and their decision making processes” (Mayer 2012: 35, cited in Kitchin et al. 2019: 16). This is particularly relevant in the context of neoliberalism, where the right to the city belongs to “the hands of a small political and economic elite who are in the position to shape the city more and more after their own particular heart’s desire” (Harvey 2008: 13).

The right to the city concept inspires me to not only focus on the incorporation of disadvantaged groups’ problems in the predetermined discourse of the SCI project, but also to question how far the disadvantaged people themselves are involved in the process of the project’s making, i.e. the governance process. In practice, there are various levels of citizen participation, which the ladder of citizen participation helps me to differentiate.

2.1.2 Ladder of citizen participation

Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation provides a practical understanding as to how far the citizen can influence policymaking processes. Citizen participation refers to the

(18)

Karel 16

distribution of power between citizens and the traditional powerholders, i.e. government3_.

The assumption is that every government wants to advocate for citizen participation because it is always good for a government to appear so (Arnstein 1969: 216). Yet, citizen participation in practice can range from non-participation, where the powerholder claims participation despite a de facto non-existing participation, to citizen control, where citizens effectively influence the governance process, and outcome (ibid). The ladder offers a typology of eight rungs of participation that belong to three overarching categories. The citizen’s power to influence the outcome increases by each level.

The lowest two rungs of (1) manipulation and (2) therapy are levels of non-participation, where the powerholder does not wish citizens to take part in the governance process, but instead aims to educate or rehabilitate them under the label of participation. Slightly higher rungs of the ladder, (3) informing, (4) consultation, and (5) placation refer to situations where citizens are deliberately informed about a planned project by the powerholder, are asked to provide their opinions on a project, or where they are invited as advisors. These levels of participation do not guarantee that citizens’ voices will be taken into consideration as to influence the outcome of the process. Citizens might be heard for the purpose of being heard without having any impact on the project. These three levels are classified as degrees of tokenism since they give the appearance of participation, but do not de facto

3_{Given the emergence of the private sector as an influential powerholder in present neoliberal} politics, the private sector could be added to the traditional powerholders, public institutions. See Section 2.2.1.

Source: Arnstein 1969: 217

(19)

Karel 17

give citizens any right to decide. Finally, the three upper-most rungs, (6) partnership, (7) delegated power, and (8) citizen control are participation levels, where citizens indeed have an agenda-setting power, be it on equal or greater terms with the powerholders. The typology offers the possibility to differentiate between gradations of citizen participation and is particularly relevant to the topic of this thesis since it was developed to assess the participation of underrepresented groups in urban development projects. Its relevance within the broader lens of inclusive development arises from the need for a typology that allows distinguishing the level of participation of disadvantaged groups in the case of SCI.

2.2 Governance

2.2.1 Neoliberal governmentality and governance as present-day politics

Neoliberal governmentality is a type of governmentality, a concept coined by Michel Foucault. “For Foucault (1991), governmentality is the logics, rationalities, and techniques that render societies governable and enable government and other agencies to enact governance” (Kitchin et al. 2019: 7). Governmentality, in other words, can be understood as rationalities through which societies are managed, and through which governance is carried out. Neoliberal type of governmentality, in particular, refers to the neoliberal mode of governing populations. Within the understanding of neoliberal governmentality, individuals are self-disciplined and governed by a market-like logic that prioritizes the pursuit of economic growth, making individuals manageable to actors of neoliberal governance for whom “the one true and fundamental social policy” is economic growth as a means through which populations are controlled and governed (Fletcher 2010: 175). While governmentality points to the conduct of the conduct, i.e. the underlying ideas and techniques through which societies, groups and individuals are managed, governance in common sense refers to the conduct itself. Governance can be defined as “the processes of interaction and decision-making among the actors involved in a collective problem that lead to the creation, reinforcement, or reproduction of social norms and institutions” (Hufty 2011: 405). Mark Bevir (2013), in “Governance after Neoliberalism” argues that even though theorists of governance and governmentality had different motivations and lacked

(20)

Karel 18

interdisciplinary communication, their approaches to present-day neoliberal politics4_have

common characteristics. From a state-de-centered lens, they both focus on the dispersion of the central authority and shift of state’s activities to a multiplicity of non-state actors, which occurred alongside neoliberal reforms in the public sector from the 1970s onwards: “The concept of governmentality— the conduct of conduct— [sic!] overlaps with governance in that it too relates power and the state to processes, exchanges, and interactions with various practices and actors in civil society” (Bevir 2013: 154). Bevir highlights that while governance scholars can benefit from the historical and genealogical approach as well as from the discursive and political focus of governmentality theorists; governmentality scholars, in turn, can recognize the role of human agency and the diversity and complexity of present power dynamics. Based on the idea that both theories can be complementary to each other, he introduces a new narrative suggesting the fusion of both schools’ methodological approaches:

“The governance literature might encourage the use of ethnography and elite interviews to study the beliefs and motivations of policymakers. The governmentality literature might encourage the use of texts and discourse analysis to study the traditions and dilemmas that provide the historical background to the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious beliefs of policymakers. Bringing these two literatures might produce historicist accounts of the assumptions, knowledge, and convictions embedded in present-day governance” (Bevir 2013: 158).

Following Bevir’s suggestion and to build a solid theoretical background for this thesis, I use the complementary potential of neoliberal governance and governmentality theories under the roof of present-day neoliberalism, in three ways. Firstly, I build on the governance literature’s analytical focus on actors’ roles, interests, interactions and the processes in policymaking to study the development of Istanbul’s smart city vision. The perspective of the multiplicity of state and non-state actors involved in neoliberal governance gives me the opportunity to study vision-making processes beyond the traditional focus of municipalities and the state as policymakers. Secondly, neoliberal governmentality allows me to not just focus on the actors and the governance processes of smart city, but to also bear in mind the power-related, i.e. political, context and to search for underlying assumptions and beliefs that govern actors’ governance. Lastly, the fusion

4_{Bevir refers to “the new politics” as a normative form of governance, and not a theoretical concept} about social organization, and defines it as “a shift in public organization and public action from hierarchic bureaucracies to markets and networks” (2013: 9) from late 1970s onwards “as policymakers responded to a crisis of the state” (ibid: 162).

(21)

Karel 19

of both theories informs this research’s methodology. While I draw on interviews to study actors’ understanding and beliefs around SCI, I rely on online sources and policy and company documents in order to unpack the context that underlies the vision of Istanbul as a smart city (see Section 3.4.).

2.2.2 The Governance Analytical Framework

After having set the building blocks of a framework to understand neoliberal governance and governmentality, for the sake of conceptual operationalization, it is worth crystallizing governance a bit further than the aforementioned governance discussion implies. To that end, I employ the Governance Analytical Framework (GAF), which provides an empirical tool to study the governance process of developing SCI. The GAF is an actor-centred governance framework that is in line with the social constructivist approach of this thesis (see Section 3.2.), which highlights that visions are constructed in multiple processes through the interaction of actors that have distinct powers, beliefs, and interests (Hufty 2011). The GAF suggests five conceptual tools to enable the examining of governance processes, which are actors, problems, social norms, nodal points, and processes (Hufty 2011: 407). These tools are interconnected and their categorization, at least in this thesis, solely serves the purpose of simplifying and visualizing what the governance process of SCI might encompass.

The first category, actors, on whom the entire methodology is based, is suggested to be analyzed in three integral levels: the identification of actors, the identification of their influence, and the identification of their interactions. In the first step, the most relevant actors in the governance process are identified. In the second step, their roles with distinct levels of influence on the governance process are examined. In a third step, the interactions between actors are observed in relation to the distribution of power between them. The category of actors includes both traditional powerholders, like the local government, as well as social groups, like disadvantaged groups (ibid: 411).

Furthermore, problems represent the issues at stake that an actor, concerning its beliefs and interests, brings forward in a governance process. Actors both want to exert influence on the nature and content of a problem, as well as on the governance process itself. Social norms are similar to problems in the way that they are based on actors’ beliefs and values, however, represent a more meta-level. Social norms include both the norms about the rules of the game, i.e. the level of governance, as well as the level of meta-governance,

(22)

Karel 20

i.e. the rules of the game. In this sense, the meta-governance is comparable to governmentality. Social norms can be, for example, meta-principles that guide society, such as economic growth, democracy, and sustainable development. They can also be constitutive, institutional norms about, for instance, how a successful smart city transformation is supposed to happen. Norms travel and are mobilized across local, national, and international levels (ibid: 410), and are comparable to the concept of urban policy mobilities that describe how ideas travel and transform through geographies (McCann 2011; McCann & Ward 2015; Temenos & Ward 2018). Moreover, nodal points are defined as physical or virtual places where actors interact. Beyond being only the place, they are moments of encounter and “form part of the fabric of decision-making spaces” (Hufty 2011: 413). Finally, processes are an important tool to flesh out the temporal character of multiple phases of governance, which take place through interactions in certain nodal points over time (ibid: 414).

To conclude, from the lens of the GAF, I see the development of SCI as constitutive of multiple processes of interaction of actors with diverse interests, norms, influence, and with particular understandings of ‘the problems’ that can be addressed through making Istanbul ‘smart’.

2.3 Smart urbanism as neoliberal and entrepreneurial urbanism

In what follows, building on the discussion of the critical smart urbanism scholarship in the Introduction, I briefly explain the theory of smart urbanism.

Smart city is neither the first nor the last attempt to characterize ‘the city’. The genealogy of city conceptions includes the ordinary city, the just city, the digital city, the connected city, the creative city, the global city, the sustainable city, the inclusive city, and the green city. Arguably, in the twenty-first century, three-city visions have been pivotal: the just city, with a focus on inclusiveness and the right to the city; the sustainable city, with a focus on environmental, economic, and social wellbeing; and the smart city, with a focus on efficiency and use of data (Gupta et al. 2015a: 6).

The exercise of city envisioning and branding, also termed “policy boosterism” (McCann 2013), can be understood within the context of a shift to neoliberal governmentality and governance in global politics. In this context, the way cities are governed shifted towards a less state-centred, less public value-concerned and more entrepreneurial form of urban

(23)

Karel 21

governance, where policymakers aimed at attracting capital flows to their cities. The economic downturn of 2008 and the precarious reality of many city governments opened the doors for entrepreneurial urbanism: “Strapped for cash, cities began to compete with one another in attracting in global capital and marketing themselves as world leading cultural, creative or smart brand cities” (Hollands 2014: 68).

As mentioned in the Introduction (Chapter 1), there is no common understanding regarding how the concept of smart city is to be understood, what exactly its object of study is, nor regarding which types of urban policies are included or excluded from its conception. Hollands notes that the “diversity of ideas [in smart urbanism] creates certain conceptual problems in discussing smart cities, as different writers invoke quite varied aspects in their definition of the term” (2014: 64). While there is no agreement neither by scholars nor by policymakers as to what makes a city smart, urban scholars and policy institutions suggest certain framings of the smart city. According to a widely cited article by Caragliu and others, “a city [is] smart when investments in human and social capital and traditional (transport) and modern (ICT) communication infrastructure fuel sustainable economic growth and a high quality of life, with a wise management of natural resources, through participatory governance” (Caragliu et al. 2011: 70). Furthermore, according to the recent re-definition of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), smart cities are “initiatives or approaches that effectively leverage digitalization to boost citizen wellbeing and deliver more efficient, sustainable and inclusive urban services and environments as part of a collaborative, multi-stakeholder process” (OECD 2019: 3). Similar definitions pointing to particular smart city components5_{such as the use}

of ICT for efficient management of urban services and resources, and a participatory governance process can be found in the smart city definitions of other international organizations such as the European Union (EIP-SCC 2017), the International Data Corporation (Yesner & Ozdemir 2017), and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU, n.d.).

As discussed in the Introduction, while these depictions typically define smart urbanism as a necessary, rational and technology-led policy intervention to the end solving cities’ complex problems and improving their living standards for good, scholars of critical smart

5_{For a comprehensive discussion of the different components of smart city and their adoption in} different academic articles, see for example Castelnovo et al. (2016: 728).

(24)

Karel 22

urbanism propose a normative and political framing of the smart city against the background of neoliberal governance. From such perspective, smart cities are “the latest attempt to use and reconfigure the city as an accumulation strategy, forming a tech-led version of entrepreneurial urbanism” (Kitchin et al. 2019: 5). Similarly, McFarlane and others highlight the aspirational, almost seductive character of the seemingly value-free, postpolitical, and rational concept of smart city, “It is a radically networked concept, and pulls across a range of different discourses – economic growth, optimization, sustainability, efficiency, better service provision, greater and more transparent citizen access, security and so on. It appears, then, as a useful and seductive concept” (McFarlane et al. 2016). The key point here is that although the mainstream narrative of the smart city appears to be focused on improving urban citizens’ lives, it is de facto driven by the private sector’s interests, “in practice the [smart city] agenda is an uncertain one, usually only partially developed, and often more about corporate-led urban development than about urban social justice” (McFarlane & Söderström 2017: 1).

Indeed, the pivotal role of the corporate sector in smart urbanism is what clearly separates the smart city conception from many previous city conceptions (Verrest & Pfeffer 2019). From the perspective of smart city as a form of neoliberal and entrepreneurial urbanism, one of the key definers of smart cities is the deregulation and privatization of city governance with an expanding role assumed by private actors, where “the place of the public sector is to act as broker, rather than service provider, with smart city units acting to source initial expertise and build partnerships” (Kitchin et al. 2019: 6). In this sense, the concept of smart city is illustrative of the mode of neoliberal governance and governmentality as it specifically relies on the collaboration with the private sector, given that smart cities per se depend on the obtainment of ICT products from large private companies (Chourabi et al. 2012: 2292).

Finally, for comprehensibility and consistency throughout this thesis, it is essential to note that similar to the normative versus analytical use of the concept of governance (Gupta et al. 2015d), the concept of smart urbanism is used two-fold in this thesis. On the one hand, smart urbanism represents a new type of entrepreneurial urbanism, where urbanism is understood as the governance process and the vision that emerges from it that together shape a city. On the other hand, the concept of smart urbanism is used to represent an emerging academic field that analyzes smart city policies (Verrest & Pfeffer 2019: 1328).

(25)

Karel 23

In this thesis, unless the scholarly aspect is made specific, the concept of smart urbanism is used to refer to smart city policymaking itself.

2.4 Concluding thoughts

“[T]he future city is diverse but just and lives within its ecological limits – our choice for an inclusive city in both developed and developing contexts rejects the notion of cities as hubs of uncontrolled economic development and concentration of wealth and power” (Gupta et al. 2015b: 21).

This chapter aimed to build a robust theoretical framework that can guide me in understanding how inclusive urban development focusing on disadvantaged people and their problems in cities can be an aspiration both in the governance process of designing SCI, and in the vision created through this design process. To that end, the theories of inclusive development, neoliberal governance and governmentality, and critical smart urbanism together allow me to situate the smart city project in Istanbul against the broader background of neoliberal politics with the increasing power of the corporate sector and the observed powerlessness of disadvantaged groups in shaping the present and future aspirations of cities.

(26)

Karel 24

2.5 Conceptual scheme

The key concepts addressed in this thesis are inclusive urban development, governance, and smart urbanism. Based on the theories elaborated in this chapter, the conceptual scheme shows how these concepts relate to each other. The governance process of Smart City Istanbul composes of multiple phases of interaction between actors, who have social norms, stakes, and roles in the Smart City Istanbul governance process. This process, influenced by key actors’ influences and ideas regarding smart urbanism, leads to a certain smart city vision. In both the process and the outcome, this research, from an inclusive development point of view, aims to analyze the inclusion of disadvantaged groups and their problems. The conceptual scheme is based on the operationalization of the concepts into dimensions and variables (see Appendix 1), which are derived from the

(27)

Karel 25

theoretical framework. The circles designated as 1a, 1b, 1c, 2a, and 2b show where the sub-questions are situated within the conceptual scheme.

(28)

Karel 26

3. Methodology

This chapter outlines how this research was designed and conducted from the beginning until the end, including the fieldwork period in Istanbul between January and April 2020. In the first three sections of this chapter, I discuss the units of analysis and observation, present my epistemological position, and elaborate on my main research question and sub-questions. Then, I explain the methods of data collection, data analysis, and sampling I used in order to research SCI. Finally, I share my reflections on the ethics and methodology of my research process.

3.1. Unit of analysis

In this research, the unit of analysis differs from the unit of observation. I understand the former as a concept about which the researcher seeks to make a statement at the end of their research, while the latter serves the collection of data. My unit of analysis comprises the design of Smart City Istanbul. At the end of the research, I wanted to be able to say something about how the making of Istanbul as a smart city as well as its envisioning by key actors worked towards an inclusive urban development. My units of observation were three-folded: On the one hand, I relied on primary data that I collected through interviews with individuals who are representative of actors involved in the making of SCI. On the other hand, I used different kinds of online resources, such as newspaper and blog articles, social media posts, press statements, and online interviews. Thirdly, I used internal documents of the IMM and ISBAK that were shared with me, as well as publicly available policy documents.

3.2. Epistemological position

This research, ontologically and epistemologically, has a predominantly constructivist approach. It assumes that social reality does not exist externally to social actors, their beliefs and practices. There is not a reality out there that we, as researchers, can know through ‘objective’ observation and analysis. Instead, together with other social actors, we are part of constant processes of interaction and negotiation through which social realities are constructed (Bryman 2012: 33-34). As such, our knowledge and its products are only a way of understanding the realities that we co-shape with other actors. In this sense, I understand ‘Smart City Istanbul’ not as a pre-given or an externally existing reality, but I believe that it is a reality, policy, idea and activity constructed by multiple actors of the social order who have certain beliefs, norms and visions about the world.

(29)

Karel 27

While my approach is predominantly constructivist, I believe that realities are not just socially constructed, but also influenced by constantly re-negotiated power relations between different actors at various levels. Thus, I am also critically positioned, and following Foucault’s intervention on the relationship between discourse/knowledge and power, believe that ideas and realities are to be seen in structures of power. That is why, inspired by postcolonial, decolonial, and critical studies, an underlying tone of this research is to reflect “what kind of knowledge, by whom, what for?” (Mignolo, 2011: xv), taking into consideration that the construction of specific concepts and visions justify and sustain certain hierarchies across different processes of governance and governmentality.

3.3 Elaboration of main research question and sub-questions

As mentioned in the Introduction, the main research question to be answered in this research is: How does the design of Smart City Istanbul aspire to an inclusive urban

development? In order to be able to answer the main research question, five

sub-questions were derived. I elaborate on them in the following.

1. The governance process of the Smart City Istanbul project

a. Through which processes did the Smart City Istanbul project came into being, who

were the key actors involved, and what roles did they play?

This first sub-question aims to unveil the extensive governance process of the Smart City Istanbul (SCI) project and to find out the key phases where actors came together to develop a smart city vision for Istanbul. The elaboration of the key processes of the making of SCI goes hand in hand with the second half of the question: the identification of the most relevant actors. Here, the focus is on identifying and describing the most influential actors who have the power and interest in developing a smart city vision in Istanbul as well as different roles in shaping the process.

b. Were disadvantaged groups included in the making, if yes, who and in which nodal

points of the process?

Building on the previous question where key actors and processes are described, this sub-question intends to single out to what extent disadvantaged groups were part of the design process of SCI. It includes the critical questioning of how key actors understand disadvantaged groups and through which methods and in which nodal points of the process they were or were not included. This in-depth scrutiny of disadvantaged people helps to deconstruct the seemingly inclusive making of SCI.

(30)

Karel 28 c. How has the local government change in Istanbul influenced the governance process?

This sub-question was initially not part of this research agenda but came into being after the data collection phase was over. The collected data shed light on the relevance and impact of the change of local government in Istanbul on the SCI project. Thus, this question tries to briefly unfold how the SCI project changed under the new municipal leadership.

2. The vision of the Smart City Istanbul project

a. How is the concept of smart city envisioned by the key actors, and what are its

underlying ambitions?

This first sub-question regarding the SCI vision attempts to analyze the main elements of the smart city vision constructed through the governance process. It mainly wants to understand what the ambitions and motives about the necessity of making Istanbul smart are that underlie key actors’ envisioning of smart urbanism. This also entails the role of technology in smart city and the differentiation of the means from the end of smart urbanism.

b. How does the Smart City Istanbul vision involve disadvantaged groups' problems?

Beyond the participation of disadvantaged groups in the making of SCI, this last sub-question addresses how the vision produced through interactions between most influential actors focuses on the issue of inclusiveness as part of the SCI vision. The goal here is to see if and how disadvantaged groups’ problems as referred to by the theory of inclusive development, play a role within the underlying ambitions of Smart City Istanbul.

3.4 Data collection

Against the background of my ontological and epistemological positioning as well as the focus of my research question, the design of this research is qualitative in nature. In order to answer the elaborated research question and sub-questions, I mainly relied on primary data from semi-structured interviews, internet sources, and internal documents. Although at the beginning of the fieldwork I had planned first to carry out the collection of data from the online sources and then to start doing interviews, in practice, I went back and forth between these two types of data collection throughout my fieldwork.

(31)

Karel 29

3.4.1 Online sources

In a first step, I collected content from various publicly available online resources. This included policy papers, press statements from national and local government in written and spoken form, company reports, newspaper article, and social media posts. I collected this content thematically, guided by my sub-questions (SQ). Most of this data served as primary data to me as I, the researcher, was interested in the way people wrote and thought about SCI and used that sort of material as my object of analysis. However, there were a few materials I found from non-Turkish online resources that reported on the SCI project, which while very basic, fostered an overview about what the SCI process and vision could look like before beginning with the interviews.

At the very beginning of the research, in order to identify and map out the multiplicity of actors involved in the making of SCI (SQ 1a), I conducted extensive internet research, searching in search engines, online media outlets and social media posts to find out any relevant publicly available information on individual and institutional actors involved in the SCI project. Regarding SQs 2a and 2b, I also collected preliminary content from early on to acquire a first understanding of how the story of SCI was being told publicly, and how it did or did not relate to inclusiveness. This first stage of online data collection was useful for the later stages as it provided a basis of knowledge that was necessary to reach out to interviewees and carry out the interviews in an informed manner.

At later stages of the data collection, as I got more acquainted with what I was looking for, I again turned to social media outlets such as Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn, as well as other online newspapers and magazines to collect data on the process and the vision of SCI.

3.4.2 Semi-structured interviews

The source of primary data that I most heavily relied on was semi-structured interviews with actors involved in Istanbul’s smart city ecosystem. I did eleven interviews and had informal chats with two more individuals from the smart city ecosystem. These interviews provided me with instrumental and insightful data about the governance process of SCI (SQs 1a-1c) as well as the vision (SQs 2a-2b). The primary data I gathered from the

(32)

Karel 30

interviews was particularly crucial, given the lack of publicly available information on the project. Semi-structured

interviews are “a context in which the interviewer has a series of questions that are in the general form of an interview schedule but can vary the sequence of questions”

(Bryman 2012: 212). Following this definition of Bryman, I defined key questions and topics and prepared an interview guide (ibid: 472, 476) with essential aspects and self-reminders about ways of getting the answers I wanted. At the same time, I stayed flexible in changing the sequence, asking follow-up questions, or slightly changing the questions if I felt the need to do so. Although I did not feel the need to consult the interview guide for questions after my second interview, it indeed helped me to stay focused on the key interests of my research: inclusive urban development and underlying ambitions, norms and interests of actors for pursuing smart urbanism in Istanbul. The duration of interviews was between 50 minutes up to two hours, but on average lasted about an hour.

3.4.3 Internal documents, policy documents, and magazine articles

There were three internal municipal documents I was given access to through two high-level interviewees. These internal documents helped immensely to either obtain information or make sense of unclear information I had acquired from interviews and to detail out the existing data on both the process and vision of SCI. The access to information about the SCI project was particularly difficult given that the project was never fully completed and made public due to political changes in the local government. Moreover, a few policy documents such as the Turkish National Development Plans, the Smart City White Paper, and the Strategic Plan of IMM, while not crucial documents for my research, allowed me to get a sense of the smart city context in Istanbul and in Turkey. Lastly, the issue of the Istanbul Technical University Foundation called Smart Cities (İTÜ

1 3 1 1 2 1 1 1

Overview of interviews

Local government Local government affiliate International organization Think-tank District municipality Academia

Foreign consultancy firm "City Lab"

(33)

Karel 31

Vakfı 2017) was very helpful both for contextualizing my research and particularly for SQ 2a because it contained various articles from relevant figures such as the former Minister of Development and former IMM Secretary-General presenting their vision of smart urbanism in Istanbul.

3.5 Data analysis

In terms of analysis, I used the method of qualitative content analysis throughout my research. While quantitative content analysis is “an approach to the analysis of documents and texts that seeks to quantify content in terms of predetermined categories and in a systematic and replicable manner” (Bryman 2012: 290), qualitative content analysis “comprises a searching-out of underlying themes in the materials being analyzed” (ibid: 557). I used the qualitative data analysis software Atlas.ti to facilitate the identification and analysis of codes. Coding in the qualitative analysis was tentative, going back and forth between emerging categories and connections. I coded all my data, including interviews, internal company reports, online newspaper articles, press statements, online interviews, social media or blog articles by key actors. I ended up having around 400 codes, which I finally organized around eight themes, which are as follows: actors, design process, politics and the role of urban management, urban problems in Istanbul, disadvantaged groups and their problems, SCI vision: understanding of smart urbanism, SCI vision: rationale & purpose, and SCI vision: role of technology. The identification of these themes happened through a back and forth between inductive and deductive reasoning: I tried to connect emerging topics from my data with the prior operationalization of concepts I had employed (see Appendix 1). I took the time needed to review all the codes in each category and used the Networks function of Atlas.ti to connect related codes. In this way, I built clusters of arguments and organized them in the form of potential answers to my sub-questions.

3.6 Sampling

For all interviews’ data excepts, there was no sampling needed since the content on Smart City Istanbul was already quite limited and stayed in the scope of this research. Regarding interviews, I used typical case sampling and snowball sampling as sampling methods. In order to understand how key actors aspire to an inclusive urban development in the process and vision of Smart City Istanbul, I interviewed different parties involved in the making of SCI. The strategy I adopted to represent distinct groups involved was to first,

(34)

Karel 32

identify institutions and individuals involved in the making of Smart City Istanbul (SQ 1a) and second, contact the most suitable person through typical case sampling, which means “[s]ampling a case because it exemplifies a dimension of interest” (Bryman 2012: 419). From the early stages of my fieldwork onwards, I focused on identifying key interviewees through internet research based on newspaper articles and social media on institutions involved in Istanbul’s smart city project. In this way, before beginning to contact interviewees, I had prepared a list of actors that were involved in smart city Istanbul projects. I further specified this list by searching for involved individuals’ names and positions at relevant institutions in LinkedIn and Twitter. I consulted this list both with my supervisor and with two colleagues from the UNDP who were familiar with the local context and/or the smart city ecosystem in Istanbul. This ‘auditing’ approach by colleagues confirmed the accuracy of the names and institutions I came up with during my web research.

I reached out to interviewees using two main approaches. First, I contacted some through personal connections. Working as an intern at the UNDP Istanbul Regional Hub for the more significant part of my fieldwork granted me the privilege to meet people with personal contacts to some of my key participants. Second, I reached out to some participants through emailing, calling at publicly available institutional numbers, or sending direct messages from my LinkedIn profile which turned out to be a straightforward and effective way of contacting high-level professionals. A further technique that I used was the snowball sampling (Bryman 2012: 424): When I interviewed a key person, at the end of the interview, I asked about other vital persons to interview. This served both triangulation since I would often hear the same names that I had come up within my preliminary online research, and sometimes it provided me with totally new institutions and people that I was not aware of. The overview of interviews I did with different actor groups is represented in Figure 3. Although I was aiming to interview up to 15 persons, due to the emergence of the unexpected COVID19 crisis, several interviews I was planning were cancelled. The cancelled interviews included one person from the civil sector, two persons from the private sector, and few influential urban scholars from the Turkish academia.

(35)

Karel 33

3.7 Ethical reflection

3.7.1 Before interviews: project information note

My interviewees mainly comprised of high-level officials and executives in public and private sectors who were or are involved in smart city-related projects in Istanbul. Due to the professional character of my research subjects, after the approval of my research proposal in February, I started drafting an informative text about participation in my research project to be sent to potential interviewees. Since often it was assistants who would pick up the phone and would ask for an email with a summary of my project and who I am, I prepared a PDF document named project information note (see Appendix 2) in which potential interviewees or their assistants would be able to find essential information on their voluntary participation easily. After the revision of my supervisor, the document in Turkish became my principal source of information when reaching out to potential interviewees. It became a huge help because it ensured that I informed participants beforehand on the principles of (a) voluntary participation, (b) informed consent, (c) safety in participation, (d) confidentiality as crucial pillars of ethical research mentioned by the GSSS Ethical Guidelines for Student Research 2019/20206_{. I divided}

this document into three parts where I summarized (1) my research topic and critical interests, (2) information about the interview process, and (3) their voluntary participation and terms of data confidentiality. I believe this document also served to avoid potential follow-up questions about me and my research and created a sense of professionalism and trust between interviewees and me. In addition, my profile as an intern at the UNDP and as a student at the University of Amsterdam probably contributed to my image as a trustworthy student and professional in participants’ eyes.

I informed my interviewees about the general terms of participation both before the interview through the information note and at the beginning of the interview itself. In the following, I elaborate on why I chose verbal type of consent during interviews.

3.7.2 During interviews: verbal consent

I was hesitant about asking my participants for signatures on a written consent form, for two reasons. First, as a person acquainted with both Turkish culture and Turkish politics,

6_{See GSSS’s ethical guidelines at}

https://gsss.uva.nl/binaries/content/assets/subsites/graduate-school-of-social-sciences/organisation/gsss-ethical-guidelines-for-students-version-2019_20.pdf. [Accessed 01/08/2020].

The myth of smart city as a form of inclusive development: the case of Smart City Istanbul

MSc Thesis

International Development Studies