Strategies of visibility in the smart city

Abstract Cities across the world are increasingly labelling themselves as smart in one way or another. At same time, this smartness appears amorphous invisible its built urban environment. Critical researchers writing on city regularly express confusion exasperation about precisely difficulty to locate city. Visibility of is not a given. This article argues that visibility case instead strategically produced , and strategy opted for tells us something kind imaginary put forward. The introduces provisional non-exhaustive taxonomy strategies based analyses three different cases projects (in Brazil, Sweden Canada) identifies ways which made visible (or not)—symbolic presence smart, modelling ubiquitous smart—and discusses what envisioned each strategy.