Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 2015, 8, 43–60

doi:10.1093/cjres/rsu010
Advance Access publication 30 June 2014

Smart cities from scratch? a socio-technical

perspective

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjres/article-abstract/8/1/43/303002 by Amity University user on 23 April 2019

Luís Carvalho
European Institute for Comparative Urban Research (Euricur) & Department of Urban,
Port and Transport Economics (RHV), Erasmus University Rotterdam, Burgemeester
Oudlaan 50, Room H16-23, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands, decarvalho@ese.eur.nl

Received on October 15, 2013; accepted on May 12, 2014

This paper argues that contemporary smart city visions based on ITs (information and tele-
communication technologies) configure complex socio-technical challenges that can ben-
efit from strategic niche management to foster two key processes: technological learning
and societal embedding. Moreover, it studies the extent to which those processes started to
unfold in two paradigmatic cases of smart city pilots ‘from scratch’: Songdo (South Korea)
and PlanIT Valley (Portugal). The rationale and potentials of the two pilots as arenas for
socio-technical experimentation and global niche formation are analysed, as well as the
tensions and bottlenecks involved in nurturing socially rich innovation ecosystems and in
maintaining social and political support over time.

Keywords: smart city, socio-technical transitions, strategic niche management, transition management,
learning, societal embedding
JEL Classifications: O31, O33, Q55, R58

new communities of innovators around cit-

Introduction
Recent developments in information and com-
munication technologies (ITs)—for example,
enhanced broadband connectivity, diffusion of
smart personal devices, data-sharing platforms,
ubiquitous computing and cloud-based solu-
tions—opened new possibilities for improving
urban living and the delivery of urban services
(Institute for the Future, 2012). These new IT
possibilities are acknowledged as game chang-
ers in the direction of ‘smarter’ cities, namely
by facilitating the coordination of fragmented
urban sub-systems (for example, energy, water,
mobility, built environment) and by harnessing
ies’ social and environmental challenges
(Allwinkle and Cruickshank, 2011). Examples
are the upcoming ‘internet-of-things’, the use of
embedded sensors in the built environment, the
roll-out of open data and the development of
urban ‘apps’.
Notwithstanding the plans and resources
already committed by governments and trans-
national IT companies (Bélissent and Giron,
2013; Woods and Gartner, 2013), the effec-
tive use of smart-IT solutions in cities is still
in its early infancy. While much has been said
about what cities would look like when such
technologies are made operational, not much

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Carvalho
has been discussed about the technical, social
and political processes involved in achieving
such outcomes (Carvalho and Campos, 2013;
Yigitcanlar and Lee, 2013). Although technol-
ogy increasingly exists, the thorny issue is that
some of the most promising solutions involve
large-scale changes in the infrastructure and
in the sub-systems that currently sustain urban
life. Their adoption is unlikely to evolve in a
linear fashion (that is, from development to
implementation) as many social dimensions
have to simultaneously mature to make the
new solutions fit to the existing world, such as
user’s preferences, legal standards, planning
requirements and social practices. It is thus
not surprising that current urban regimes (for
example, based on individual mobility, central-
ised energy distribution, inefficient built envi-
ronment) have been proving hard to challenge
(for example, Bulkeley et al., 2011). At best, a
top-down ‘smart technology’ push is likely to
be insufficient.
Hence, which socio-technical processes have
to be followed so that new smart-IT solutions
can re-shape the functioning of cities? This paper
draws on the literature of socio-technical studies
of innovation and sustainability transitions (for
example, Elzen et  al., 2004; Kemp et  al., 1998;
Schot and Geels, 2008) to suggest a framework
to better understand the processes involved in
experimenting and scaling-up new IT-related,
smart-city propositions. It argues that the dif-
fusion of smart-city technologies and solutions
in society resemble socio-technical transitions,
thus requiring early experimentation ‘gardens’
and arenas for strategic niche management, that
is, the development of protected spaces in which
governments, industrialists and citizens, among
others, interact to test and fine-tune solutions
towards broader scaling-up (Kemp et al., 1998;
Rotmans, 2005), with an eye to enact processes
of technological learning and societal embed-
ding (Truffer et al., 2002).
Subsequently, this framework is illustrated
with two contemporary, extreme cases of
smart-city pilots ‘from scratch’, that is, planned
44
in greenfield areas with almost no former resi-
dents or infrastructure, with purposely loose and
flexible regulations: the new Songdo district in
Incheon (South Korea) and the PlanIT Valley
in the North of Portugal. Among a burgeoning
number of smart-city experiments worldwide
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(for example, Joss et al., 2013), both pilots called
the attention of many international commenta-
tors (Hatch, 2012; The Economist, 2010) due to
their ambitious technological propositions—
for example, large-scale embeddedness of sen-
sors in the built environment, ‘urban operating
systems’ and ‘machine-to-machine’ solutions.
In this paper, their rationale and potentials
as localised arenas for socio-technical experi-
mentation are analysed through a learning and
societal embedding lens. Despite their unique
‘blankness’ advantages, a closer look reveals
the many challenges and bottlenecks involved
in nurturing socially rich innovation ecosystems
and in maintaining social and political support,
which can ultimately hinder the way learning
and societal embedding processes are launched
and sustained over time.
The empirics in this paper draw on evidence
collected under the setting of two international
research projects, conducted during 2009 and
2011. Besides multiple secondary and docu-
mental sources (for example, company reports,
strategic documents, specialised publications,
web discussion forums, press-releases, personal
communications) it relies on in-depth, semi-
structured face-to-face interviews with the
pilot’s proponents and involved stakeholders,
namely technology companies (CEO’s, direc-
tors, chief technologists), governmental organi-
sations (city and regional government officers)
and academia (researchers involved with the
pilots), triangulated with other organisations
and local experts in the host regions. Interviews
lasted between 45 minutes and 3 hours and
explored topics such as i) the pilot’s history
and rationale, ii) key partners involved, iii)
early outcomes and iv) main challenges ahead.
For each case, interviews were conducted in
different moments of time (in two different

rounds), allowing to trace changes in the early
development of both pilots. A total of 31 inter-
views were conducted (Songdo/Incheon, 17;
PlanIT Valley/Paredes-North of Portugal, 14)1.
Extensive interview reports were produced
afterwards and preliminary results were dis-
cussed with key experts in both regions2.
The rest of the paper is organised as follows.
The next section briefly discusses the contested
notion of ‘smart city’ and argues that new
smart-IT visions for cities configure complex
socio-technical challenges, thus requiring stra-
tegic niche management to foster technological
learning and societal embedding. Subsequently,
the paper elaborates on the potentials and
limitations of smart cities ‘from scratch’; it pro-
ceeds by analysing early processes of learning
and societal embedding in the two case studies,
followed by a discussion. The paper concludes
by proposing a number of research avenues to
strengthen the dialogue between the literature
on smart cities, sustainability transitions and
strategic niche management.
Smart cities as socio-technical
challenges
Smart cities: setting the scene
Over the last few years, many different perspec-
tives of what a smart city is (or should be) per-
meated academic, business and policy arenas
(for example, Allwinkle and Cruickshank, 2011;
Carvalho et al., 2013; Gibbs et al., 2013; Kitchin,
2014). Naturally, ‘smart’ and ‘smart city’ as such
became elusive concepts, appropriated by dif-
ferent actors with different meanings, referring,
among others, to (i) the local administration’s
ability to do more with less (money), (ii) a
city’s educational standard or (iii) a city’s suc-
cess in limiting urban sprawl. Yet, and beyond
its broader meanings, most ‘smart city’ notions
have explicit IT dimensions. It is believed that
ITs can increasingly contribute to solve or ame-
liorate pressing urban sustainability problems
by improving service efficiency (for example,
by reducing water losses and traffic congestion)
Smart cities from scratch?
or, in some cases, by fully revolutionising urban
provisions (for example, energy generation and
distribution).
The idea that ITs can improve cities and
urban services is not new. Previous IT break-
throughs—for example, telematics, the World
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Wide Web, broadband diffusion, web 2.0—gen-
erated already considerable academic and pol-
icy attention (for example, Hardey, 2007; Ishida
and Isbister, 2000; Meer and Winden, 2003).
Yet, recent IT developments (for example,
embedded systems, wireless networks, cloud
computing, smart-devices and real-time data
sharing) promise to structurally change the
provision of urban services. For example, under
an (envisioned) ubiquitous computing para-
digm, ITs can “weave themselves into the fabric
of everyday life until they are indistinguishable
from it” (Weiser, 1991, 94). In this vein, large
IT powerhouses (for example, Cisco, IBM) and
local governments have been imagining cities in
which buildings, roads, electric grids and waste
systems are connected to each other through
dense networks of sensors and wireless tech-
nologies, with permanent data exchange and
‘machine-to-machine’ integration (for example,
Hatch, 2012).
More recently, the smart-city discourse
started to evolve from such grand, top-down
technology visions to highlight the potentials
of IT-enhanced platforms to facilitate commu-
nity engagement, participation and new ways of
solving urban problems through civic innova-
tion (Townsend, 2013) and ‘smart-er’ commu-
nities (Allwinkle and Cruickshank, 2011). This
approach is sceptical of turn-key, ‘smart-city-
in-a-box’ solutions and explicitly favours the
involvement of broader sets of actors (beyond
IT corporations) in the development of smart-
IT solutions for cities. In the process, it advo-
cates for a deeper consideration of the political
and social fabric that binds cities together.
All in all, and besides the development
and implementation of piecemeal applica-
tions (for example, light automation in build-
ings, IT-powered congestion charging, urban
45
Carvalho
parking ‘apps’), there is still a large gap
between viewing and doing. In practice, the
development of IT-powered smart cities is still
in its early infancy. Laying new ubiquitous ITs,
pervasive sensors and real-time data in old
and entrenched systems involve large-scale
changes in the infrastructure and artefacts that
sustain urban life, such as buildings or electrical
grids (Hodson and Marvin, 2009). Moreover,
and perhaps more important, it implies that
many other socio-institutional dimensions
have to simultaneously co-evolve to make new
technologies and innovations fit to the existing
world, such as user’s preferences and cultural
practices, legal standards, planning require-
ments, actor’s networks, privacy expectations
and business models. Thus, the deployment of
new IT solutions in cities—or, in other words,
making smart-city visions happen—is not only
an issue of developing and pushing the right
technologies. The changes involved have a
clear and challenging socio-technical nature.
A socio-technical perspective
There is a large body of literature—rooted in
evolutionary theorising and the history of tech-
nology—that studies the processes followed by
socio-technical systems before their broader
implementation in society (for example, cen-
tralised energy production; water distribution
systems). As those systems—composed by
assemblages of artefacts, technologies, net-
works and institutions—tend to stabilise and
produce mainly incremental innovations, schol-
ars of social studies of technology speak of
technological transitions to refer to larger-scale,
more radical system innovations unfolding
through non-linear co-evolutionary processes
between technological, social, political and eco-
nomic domains, taking place over long periods
of time (Elzen et al., 2004; Geels, 2002; Geels,
2005; Kemp et al., 1998; Smith et al., 2005).
These literatures posit that the dynamics
of socio-technical systems can be understood
from a multilevel perspective, through the
46
interaction of landscape, regime and experi-
mentation niches (Hoogma et al., 2002; Kemp
et al., 1998). The central block of a socio-tech-
nical system is the regime, formed by a largely
stable set of interacting artefacts, technolo-
gies, infrastructures, every day practices, poli-
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cies, values and institutions. Despite its overall
stability (for example, centralised energy pro-
duction), a regime can be challenged by emer-
gent socio-technical configurations incubated
in niches: experimental settings in which new
technologies and innovations are tested by
new constellations of actors, with the ambition
to present alternatives to the current regime
(Rip and Kemp, 1998). The actions unfolding
in niches (for example, testing of new ways of
energy production, ‘machine-to-machine’ inter-
actions in cities or opening real-time city data
to wider communities) contribute to add vari-
ety and pressure to the current socio-technical
configurations or regimes. Regime and niche
levels interact within a slowly evolving land-
scape, composed by societal values, worldviews,
fundamental technological developments and
macro-structural economic, social and environ-
mental conditions. Over time, socio-technical
change can result from the landscape’s pres-
sures (for example, climate change threats or
fast urbanisation) but also—and often in tan-
dem—from the unfolding and consolidation of
new technological niches.
Under this framework, niche experimenta-
tion is fundamental to foster socio-technical
change and the introduction of new technolo-
gies in society. Hence the policy prescriptions
of transition management (Rotmans, 2005) and
strategic niche management (Hoogma et  al.,
2002; Kemp et  al., 1998), that is, the develop-
ment of “protected spaces created by specific
actors—be they industry managers, policymak-
ers or citizen groups—with the strategic aim to
test and develop a technology and to prepare it
for further diffusion” (Truffer et al., 2002, 113).
Strategically managed niches and transi-
tion arenas aim to create protected incuba-
tion opportunities so that new desirable yet

immature socio-technical configurations can be
tested, gain constituency, advocates, nudge new
regulatory frameworks and, ultimately, become
solid alternatives to current regimes.
Hence, under which circumstances can the
emergence of new technological niches happen
(for example, new smart-IT urban solutions)
and pave the way towards broader regime shifts
(for example, fully fledged, IT-supported smart
cities)? Which processes have to be followed?
According with Truffer et  al. (2002) niche-
based arenas and experiments are pivotal to
the extent that they can gradually support two
key processes (see also Kemp et al, 1998; Schot
and Geels, 2008):
• Learning, that is, the discovery, testing and
fine-tuning of new insights about the tech-
nologies at stake, their variants and the
conditions for success in real-life environ-
ments, and,
• Societal embedding, that is, the progres-
sive interaction between new technologies/
solutions and the social, cultural, political
and governance dimensions that structure
their use. Societal embedding encompasses
three interlinked processes:
i) Network building: the creation of constitu-
ency and coalitions of public and private
supporters of the technology (potential
producers, users, regulators) and resource
pooling (for example, money, expertise);
ii) Infrastructure matching: the adjustment of
the new technologies to an existing socio-
technical environment of regulations,
standards, business models and physical
artefacts; and
iii) Expectation building: the development of
favourable expectations and visions about
the advantages of the new technologies for
society, (international) attention and legiti-
macy for continuing experimentation.
Transition management and niche-based
approaches have been deployed over the last
Smart cities from scratch?
years with an eye to foster sustainability-related
transitions—for example, the redesign of mobil-
ity, energy, health and waste systems—often
through very concrete and localised experi-
ments in cities (Bulkeley et  al., 2011; Nevens
et al., 2012; Rohracher and Späth, 2013). In pro-
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tected niche arenas or experiments, new socio-
technical propositions can have breathing space
to unfold and gain some critical mass—that is,
to ignite and develop early processes of learn-
ing and societal embedding—before ‘protec-
tions’ (for example, political support, flexible
regulations, financial resources) can be progres-
sively removed.
Smart-city pilots (‘from scratch’) as
specific niche-based experiments
How have these processes been operating in
smart-city pilots? Over the last few years, a
number of smart-city experiments started to
be designed and implemented with the aim of
prototyping solutions and progressively embed
them in society. Even if transition manage-
ment and strategic niche management were
not explicitly prescribed as guiding tools, most
smart-city pilots largely resemble niche-based,
transition experiments. Visionary entrepre-
neurs, IT corporations and proactive mayors
have been amongst their biggest supporters
(Carvalho and Campos, 2013; Hatch, 2012;
Lindsay, 2010), but other communities (for
example, open data users and activists) are
increasingly involved as well (Townsend, 2013).
Smart-city experiments have been com-
ing in many shapes and guises. Some target
piecemeal improvements and largely operate
within the socio-technical fabric of existing
cities (for example, open data on water flows;
automated building and street lighting systems;
remote electricity metering). However, others
propose the development of entire new cities
and districts ‘from scratch’. In the second case,
it is considered that more demanding smart-
city visions are mostly incompatible with the
current socio-technical contexts of existing
47
Carvalho
cities (for example, infrastructure fragmenta-
tion, procurement regulations and ownership
models). Hence, even if some of the piloted
technologies and artefacts are not necessarily
radically detached from current socio-technical
regimes (for example, IT solutions for mobil-
ity management or smart-IT powered electric
grids), they tend to face large mismatches with
regard to current user practices, regulations,
infrastructure and business models, thus still
requiring niche-based experimental settings.
In the case of smart-city pilots ‘from scratch’,
niche experiments are designed to cater for full
system integration from the early beginning.
They are planned in social and physically ‘virgin
land’ (that is, with no former residents, build-
ings or infrastructures), in policy-protected
arenas (with loose, experimentation-oriented
and flexible regulations), aiming to attract new
residents and companies to be simultaneously
users and developers of new smart-IT solutions.
Thus, one of their defining features is the strong
protection from the complexity and uneven-
ness of real-life cities: entrenched social and
physical infrastructures, business routines and
political arenas.
The ‘strong protection’ feature has concep-
tual and theoretical implications, namely when
it comes to learning and societal embedding
expectations and possibilities. First, as the eco-
nomic geography literature suggests, richer
modes of learning (that is, combining multiple
types of tacit knowledge pieces) tend to rely
on place-based, path-dependent ecologies of
actors and their networks, often linked by cul-
tural and social ties, knowledge exchange rou-
tines and mutual understanding (for example,
Bathelt et  al., 2004); such networks include
not only firms and their knowledge partners,
but also increasingly users and consumers as
co-learners and co-producers (Grabher et  al.,
2008). Hence, this literature demonstrates that
the simple co-presence of actors and innovators
(firms, knowledge institutes, users) with limited
or absent social, cultural or institutional ties
(for example, like in a smart city ‘from scratch’)
48
is likely to be insufficient for rich learning to
unfold. The attraction of external-to-the-city
innovators is insufficient if a place lacks the
right, related variety of actors, activities and
institutions to anchor and recombine knowl-
edge locally (Boschma and Frenken, 2011;
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Crevoisier and Jeannerat, 2009). Thus, the types
of learning in ‘from scratch’ pilots are likely to
be more intensive in the production and col-
lection of facts and data (about their techno-
logical propositions) than on dense interactions
among actors conducive to socially grounded,
locally co-developed solutions.
Second, piloted technologies in ‘from scratch’
projects are expected to become embed-
ded overtime in new social practices within
the ‘enclave’ but also to constitute ‘first steps’
towards global processes of societal embed-
ding. Beyond ‘de-bugging’ technical aspects,
such processes may involve the nurturing of
new coalitions and networks of knowledge pro-
ducers, users and advocates, as well as the early
visualisation of new infrastructure and gov-
ernance arrangements required to implement
new solutions in society. As the pilot gener-
ates international awareness and raises expec-
tations, it can influence other less protected
places towards the formation and structuration
of global niches (Geels and Schot, 2008).
However, in practice, the literatures on socio-
technical transitions suggest that the processes
of societal embedding and progressive global
niche formation can be hampered by a number
of localised phenomena in the host city/region,
potentially heightened in the case of ‘from
scratch’ experiments. Those relate with (i) the
difficulties to find a balance between empow-
ering front-running actors (such as visionary
entrepreneurs and government advocates) and
involving wider segments of users and local
communities with limited voice and agency (for
example, Lawhon and Murphy, 2012; Loorbach
and Rotmans, 2010) and (ii) the challenges
imposed by contestation, uneven power rela-
tions and the political environments of the host
city/region (Shove and Walker, 2007). Under
 Smart cities from scratch?

these situations, early societal embedding is
likely to be jeopardised by the difficulties in
maintaining momentum, resources (diversified
knowledge, finance) and a local license to oper-
ate (Nevens et al., 2012), making it difficult to
keep the experiment running over sufficient
spearhead in the (local and national) govern-
ment’s investment attraction strategy, with an
eye to lure international companies, universi-
ties and expatriate workers (van Winden et al,
2012).
The first smart-IT visions for Songdo date

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periods of time.
Case Studies: Songdo and
PlanIT Valley
In this section, the previous framework is illus-
trated with two well-known cases of smart-city
pilots ‘from scratch’: Songdo and PlanIT Valley.
After briefly introducing their visions and cur-
rent development status (see also Table  1),
their rationales, early achievements and limita-
tions fostering technological learning and soci-
etal embedding are explored.
Songdo
Songdo is a newly build, mixed-use district
at the edge of Incheon (South Korea). In the
early 2000s, Incheon was awarded the status
of Free Economic Zone and Songdo became a
from 2004, when it was selected as a pilot in
the Korean ‘ubiquitous-city’ (or ‘u-city’) strat-
egy and envisioned as a test-bed of new u-tech-
nologies in daily life. Examples are real-time
traffic solutions, health care, crime prevention
and environmental information services, all
based on radio frequency identification devices
(RFID), smart displays, data-sharing, video-
networking and embedded sensors (IFEZ,
2010). Songdo’s u-city strategy has been coor-
dinated by the IFEZ (Incheon Free Economic
Zone) authority, responsible for providing
hard incentives (funding, facilities) to attract
and nurture ‘u-technology’ companies, both
from Korea and abroad. In 2009, Cisco signed
a deal to provide their TelePresence technol-
ogy (a video-conferencing platform system) to
new buildings and explore related u-services in
Songdo (see also Lindsay, 2010).

Table 1.  Key features of Songdo and PlanIT Valley.

Features Songdo PlanIT Valley

Nearest city Incheon (50 km from Seoul),
South Korea
Planned size after completion (hectares) 5.300 (sea-reclaimed land)
Development stage of the site Under construction (started in 2003)
Primary uses Mixed (for example, international
business district, housing,
international university campuses,
science parks, high-level amenities)
Dominant technological vision ‘Ubiquitous city’
Key integrating ITs Cisco TelePresence
RFID and ‘urban integrated
operation centre’
Driving force Local and National Government
Main stakeholders City of Incheon, National
Government; IFEZ—Incheon Free
Economic Zone, Gale, POSCO, Cisco
Paredes (30 km from Porto),
Portugal
1.670 (greenfield site)
Planning concluded (2009); start delayed
R&D and prototyping facilities (plus
housing and basic amenities)
‘City with a brain’
UOSTM (Urban Operating System)
Sensors and ‘urban apps’
Living PlanIT (born-global IT company)
Living PlanIT, Members of PlanIT’s
‘ecosystem’ (for example, technology
companies, developers), National and
Local Government (supportive role)

Source: Fieldwork.

49
Carvalho
Up to now, Songdo attracted many com-
panies working with IT and u-related tech-
nologies, national and foreign, large and small
(IFEZ, 2010). Sensors, displays, ‘smart walls’
and related technologies permeated parts of
Songdo’s infrastructure, but no dramatic change
occurred yet in Songdo’s sub-systems or living
modes. It is estimated that only roughly 3% of
the total development costs of Songdo have
been allocated to smart-IT components (Hatch,
2012). The large majority of the new solutions
focus on regular consumption (for example,
e-commerce, smart cards) and geo-location (for
example, of children and the elderly) and not
so much on structurally new ways of rendering
urban provisions (for example, Shwayri, 2013).
Moreover, u-solutions have been largely pushed
from corporations to residents, in a rather inflex-
ible fashion (Lindsay, 2010; Shin, 2009).
PlanIT Valley
Contrarily to Songdo’s state-driven initiative,
the idea behind PlanIT Valley—a large smart-
city pilot planned for the North of Portugal—
has been championed by Living PlanIT, a
born-global IT company led by a group of
experienced transnational entrepreneurs. The
vision for the area consists in developing a pri-
vate, brand-new prototype district in which a
number of environmentally friendly, smart-IT
solutions can be developed, tested, fine-tuned
and showcased. To this effect, Living PlanIT is
bringing together international IT providers,
developers, mobility companies and other sup-
pliers to locate R&D antennas in the new dis-
trict. The underlying rationale is that the staff
of the relocated companies (and their families)
will become simultaneously developers and
users of new smart-IT solutions in place.
The selling point of the PlanIT Valley is the
possibility to develop and implement new solu-
tions, urban services and ‘apps’ through a propri-
etary platform called ‘Urban Operating System’
(UOSTM), developed by Living PlanIT. The UOS
platform works in connection with many physical
50
sensors and cloud computing and, according with
its proponents, “can be compared to a brain,
linked and giving orders to the many parts of a
nervous system.” As the Chartered Institute of
Building (2011) puts it, PlanIT Valley’s central
innovation proposition is to foster
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...smart buildings and cities impregnated with
sensing, communications and remote actua-
tion devices (...), allowing for unprecedented
control of waste and energy. (...) Buildings
won’t really be buildings anymore; primarily,
they will be computing devices, “iBuildings”,
like iPhones, allowing developers to get more
money out of their built assets by facilitat-
ing the provision of software applications to
building occupants. (6)
Currently, financial and credit access con-
strains are delaying the start of the construction.
Nevertheless, many technology companies are
already committed to take part in Living PlanIT’s
‘UOS-ecosystem’, and pay a high membership fee
for that. While the development does not start, the
UOS is being explored and deployed in smaller
smart-IT pilots around the world, for example, in
the Netherlands, UK, Brazil and China.
Technological learning
So far, how did the two pilots managed to
steer technological learning, that is, to discover,
test and fine-tune new insights concerning
the technologies’ success in real-life environ-
ments? Which advantages and limitations can
be found?
Complementarily to piecemeal pilots in ‘old’
cities, the leading technological proponents in
Songdo and PlanIT Valley praise the virtues
of ‘from scratch’ pilots to test new IT solu-
tions in an integral fashion. Overall, the pro-
posed advantages run through the provision of
a ‘blank sheet’ environment. First, the physical
infrastructure in such pilots is more mould-
able and experimentation-prone. For example,
the new bridge linking Incheon’s international

airport to Songdo has been early commis-
sioned to be impregnated with sensors to per-
manently monitor traffic conditions, as well as
to provide remote safety services; to this effect,
a Finnish technology provider established an
R&D subsidiary in Songdo to closely monitor
the experiment and learn for other contexts.
The same goes for other North-American and
Korean companies who developed IT-based
traffic control systems in their home bases and
are currently testing them in place (for example,
road safety systems in the proximity to schools).
Moreover, in ‘from scratch’ cities, infrastructure
such as buildings, grids, lightning and sewage
systems, etc., can be developed in a more articu-
lated fashion, making it easier to be connected
to IT environments from the early beginning.
As explained by a technologist at Living PlanIT,
Designing a city’s infrastructure and IT back-
bone from the ground up is a golden oppor-
tunity to explore new solutions and integrate
the city’s sub-systems from the onset – it’s like
starting with a “clean slate”. (...) [Otherwise]
it is very difficult to achieve full integration
of all the old entrenched urban subsystems
[e.g. energy, waste, lightning, safety] and to
visualise how that integration can work.
Second, by providing more flexibility and trial-
and-error opportunities, dedicated pilots ‘from
scratch’ make it easier to test, change and fre-
quently adapt new technologies on-the-go. As
elucidated by an interviewee,
...in a regular city district, or even in a building, it
is not easy to frequently introduce new techno-
logical features when problems are identified:
there is a lot of inertia. However, this perma-
nent testing is the raison d’être in private, dedi-
cated test-beds (...). For example, it becomes
possible to regularly turn-on/off all the routers
and introduce “upgrades” on-the-go.
Yet, despite the advantages, the ‘clean slate’
status comes with two major societal-related
Smart cities from scratch?
downsides. First, despite the ambitions, ‘from
scratch’ pilots seem to find it hard to nur-
ture new innovation ecosystems. The case of
Songdo shows that fiscal incentives, the prox-
imity to Incheon/Seoul and the ‘blank sheet’
promise made it possible to attract a consider-
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able number of technology firms and research
units in a short period of time, both from Korea
and beyond (Cisco, IBM, start-up companies,
sections of the University of Seoul, etc). Yet,
interaction routines between localised play-
ers did not seem to diffuse at the same pace.
For example, the more challenging IT propo-
sitions of Cisco—system integration through
TelePresence solutions—have been imple-
mented in Songdo (many offices and apartments
are currently endowed with it), but developed
through technology and company acquisitions
in the USA, Australia and Germany (see also
Lindsay, 2010), rendering knowledge exchange
and interactions in place limited. The same goes
for other smart, remote-controlled IT solu-
tions applied in the building environment (for
example, lights, elevators, air conditioning, air
sensors), which had been developed elsewhere
even if tested locally. In PlanIT Valley, the early
attempts to create an ecosystem of companies
‘from scratch’ has resulted, so far, in a limited
number of localised interactions—the lion’s
share of the urban operating system (UOS)
development has been taking place in London
and in Detroit, largely within the boundaries of
the company and applied to other urban retro-
fitting projects (for example, in East London).
Second, and related with the previous, the
lack of active and socially mixed communities
and the dominance of elite IT companies as
knowledge producers have been hampering
more widespread learning possibilities. Both
Songdo and (the planning of) PlanIT Valley
illustrate the difficulties gathering socially
heterogeneous users in place, ultimately lim-
iting the ‘real-life’ context of the experiments.
In Songdo, the initial ambition was to attract
expatriates (considered to be advanced IT
users); however, over time, the real estate
51
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market turned the location into a high-end,
homogeneous Korean suburb (Shwayri, 2013).
In PlanIT Valley, the ambition has always
been to cluster technology companies’ staff
from the beginning and to develop a ‘private
tech town’, thus with a relatively homogenous
socio-economic profile and limited former
social ties.
Therefore, the pilots’ design—lack of for-
mer residents, companies and other organisa-
tions—made the role of technology producers
overwhelmingly dominant, limiting the pos-
sibilities of actively creating and recombining
more diverse types of knowledge in place (for
example, from users and other stakeholders).
The case of Songdo illustrates that many of the
technologies currently deployed—for exam-
ple, TelePresence; smart personal cards with
integrated transponders; remote monitoring
solutions—essentially run from the technolo-
gists to the users. In this context, processes
of joint development and co-creation remain
incipient; simultaneously, issues of data pri-
vacy and ownership emerged and have been
dominating the smart-IT debate between resi-
dents and corporate players (see also Oxford,
2013).
Summing up, the cases of Songdo and
PlanIT Valley illustrate the learning rationales
and advantages associated with the develop-
ment of smart-city pilots ‘from scratch’, namely
the mouldable infrastructure, the flexibility of
experimentation, trial-and-error and the pos-
sibilities to achieve early integration of multi-
ple urban sub-systems. However, under those
conditions, learning processes become strongly
moderated by the pilot’s societal limitations,
namely the difficulties to foster localised inter-
actions and innovation ecosystems, the reli-
ance on homogenous sets of users and the
dominance of elite technological knowledge
in the process. Therefore, in their current for-
mat, smart cities ‘from scratch’ risk emphasis-
ing divides between knowledge producers and
knowledge users, hampering broader learning
processes.
52
Societal embedding
Together with technological learning, transi-
tions go through processes of societal embed-
ding, that is, the connection between new
technological propositions and the social
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world. It involves the creation of constituency,
actor coalitions and societal support around
new technologies (network management), the
co-evolution between new technologies, regu-
lations, standards, infrastructures and busi-
ness models (infrastructure matching) and the
development of international attention, legiti-
macy, visions and positive expectations about
the advantages of the new solutions for society
(expectation building). So far, how did the two
cases manage to steer these processes?
First, both Songdo’s development and PlanIT
Valley’s announcement generated momentum
and scope for the formation of new actor coa-
litions around smart-IT solutions, both locally
and internationally. For example, in Songdo,
the u-city strategy influenced the allocation of
national R&D funding and the development of
new facilities (for example, a national R&D cen-
tre for RFID, including testing and showcasing
facilities). Moreover, it raised awareness among
local policymakers, nudging the procurement
and testing of solutions that would not be easily
demanded by the market (for example, embed-
ding sensors in the built environment and new
associated u-services). Songdo’s u-city strategy
also led to a new partnership between POSCO
and Gale (Korean and North-American real
estate developers, respectively) to endow
their buildings with Cisco technology, not only
in Songdo but in other parts of the world. In
the case of PlanIT Valley, the early announce-
ment of the pilot generated considerable fuss
in the region and led to the formation of local
and international partnerships to champion
the UOS’s possibilities. A  number of leading
Portuguese and international companies (IT,
mobility, telecoms, developers and architecture
firms) signed formal agreements to participate
and design new smart-IT solutions for the plat-
form. Moreover, Living PlanIT teamed up with

the University of Porto to host a large interna-
tional conference on smart cities, and incentiv-
ised the interest for joint research programmes
across different faculties and higher education
institutions.
Second, due to their dimension and tech-
nological ambition, both Songdo and PlanIT
benefited from early exemptions and flexibil-
ity vis-à-vis the physical-societal structures of
the host place, such as national and local policy
frameworks (for example, bureaucracy, build-
ing heights, zoning codes, procurement rou-
tines). This gave rise to opportunities for testing
new services and business models that could
hardly fit current regulations and practices. For
example, Songdo has provided room for the
development of new business models beyond
the Korean legislation, for example, foreign
and privately supplied (partly monopolistic) IT
solutions to connect different u-services, which
would not have been possible under standard
Korean regulations. In PlanIT Valley, the plans
to develop a ‘private city’ have been per defini-
tion an attempt to overcome the routines and
(procurement) regulations that determine ser-
vice provisions in regular cities and to visualise
new potential governance and business models.
Third, Songdo and PlanIT Valley were
designed as global showrooms of new ways of
‘smart-living’ in cities, places where residents
and users can assess the benefits (and the costs)
of new technologies. A  Living PlanIT’s repre-
sentative explains the role of such pilots foster-
ing awareness and wider legitimation:
As the construction of the [PlanIT] Valley
is slightly delayed, we have been testing
the UOS in other places. (…) Yet, none of
them can replace what the PlanIT Valley is
planned to be (...): an integral showcase, the
place where the merits of the new solutions
can be visualized altogether.
Moreover, the attention raised by such a
‘ground-breaking’ proposition contributed to
raise expectations about the potential of the
Smart cities from scratch?
UOS as an integrated solution for cities; the
case received attention in leading business
schools (Eccles et al., 2010) and PlanIT Valley
proponents have been invited to high-level
industry and government conferences world-
wide, including the World Economic Forum.
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In Songdo, the IFEZ authority became an
ambassador of new u-solutions worldwide and
worked to showcase them in many forums and
conferences. Moreover, IFEZ plans to demon-
strate some of Songdo’s new u-solutions in the
forthcoming 2014 Asian Games in Incheon.
Adding to this, a number of technology pro-
viders and IFEZ developed a futuristic exhibi-
tion centre—called ‘Tomorrow City’—where
visions of ‘u-futures’ in cities can be visualised
and experienced by residents and visitors.
Despite the advantages of such pilots to
raise awareness, visualisation of solutions and
networks of (corporate, academic and govern-
ment) advocates, in practice, a number of limi-
tations and contradictions seem to moderate
the pilots’ societal embeddedness merits and
potentials. An overreaching critique is that
Songdo and PlanIT Valley are too protected
and detached from real-life cities, making
its propositions hard to scale up beyond the
boundaries of the experiment. Moreover, as the
cases illustrate, over time, their ‘from scratch’
features magnified tensions accessing financial
resources and the ‘licence to operate’ from their
host cities and regions.
First, partly because of its scale and ambi-
tions, the pilots found it difficult to retain the
initial momentum. The difficulties to deliver in
the short run become associated with tensions
with the surrounding (not ‘from scratch’) socio-
political environments; as a result, funding,
social and political support tended to erode.
In Songdo, the initial momentum and politi-
cal support significantly decreased as the for-
mer Mayor Sang-Soo Ahn left office in 2010
(leaving a mounting public debt), rendering
Songdo and its u-strategies towards political
indifference (see also Shwayri, 2013). By that
time, Songdo’s debt had to be restructured
53
Carvalho
and the real estate consortium Gale-POSCO
agreed to concede 50% of the future profits to
the City of Incheon. Subsequently, also a num-
ber of disagreements emerged between Gale
(the lead real estate developer of Songdo)
and the Korean Government about the resi-
dential-commercial mix in the area and about
the incentives for business attraction. A  large
share of the developed office space remained
empty and the government refused to subsi-
dise the relocation of national companies. This
re­adjustment placed strong pressure on the
finance available to support smart-IT upgrades
and further experimentation.
In the PlanIT Valley, the difficulties pulling pri-
vate funding and the project’s delay also impacted
the on the political support. The local government
started to face political contestation (for their
institutional support, provision of cheap land and
promises of new jobs) and scepticism increased
within the surrounding community. Moreover,
early networks developed between Living PlanIT,
local companies and knowledge institutes lost
momentum. In both cases, as the political-soci-
etal support decreased and financial constrains
emerged, the strategies of the dominant IT com-
panies shifted towards smaller experiments else-
where, tapping on available packages of stimulus
funds and focusing on piecemeal ‘smartisation’ of
some parts of old urban structures (for example,
adding sensors to sewage systems). For example,
the UOS platform has been deployed in the rede-
velopment of the City airport in London and the
British Government is supporting a number of
research programs to develop UOS-based ‘apps’
in local retrofitting projects.
Second, the large distance between current
policy frameworks and the ones operating at
the pilot render the experiments too detached
from real-life contexts, making it difficult to per-
meate current socio-technical regimes. In both
pilots, many interviewees raised doubts about
the scalability of the experiments once the reg-
ulatory protection was removed and how would
they work for less advantaged social groups. For
example, the private-city strategy for PlanIT
54
Valley raised concerns about the governability
of the pilot (and about the eventual election
of political representatives) within the current
political frameworks of Paredes (but also of
other newly built cities). In Incheon, local gov-
ernment representatives became increasingly
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concerned about the perception of elitism that
Songdo represented and hence mounting diffi-
culties emerged persuading local tax payers of
the benefits of the (costly) investments.
Summing up, Songdo and (the plans for)
PlanIT Valley illustrate the societal embedding
benefits and rationales for developing ambi-
tious and strong-proposition ‘from scratch’
experiments: they (i) contributed to generate
momentum and to nudge new front-running
actor coalitions, both locally and internation-
ally, (ii) allowed for the testing of new business
models beyond current regulatory frameworks
and (iii) created expectations and facilitated the
visualisation of new technologies and solutions.
However, too much distance from the current
socio-technical world of regulations, standards
and policy routines and the difficulties in main-
taining the early support over time have been
limiting societal embedding possibilities and
the structuration of global niches. Moreover,
the observed erosion of financial, political and
societal support and the rebalancing of inter-
ests between stakeholders (in Songdo) seems
to highlight an emerging mismatch between
the potential benefits of ‘from scratch’ pilots
and their massive development costs.
Discussion
Different as they are, both Songdo and PlanIT
Valley highlight the core features of the con-
temporary attempts to develop smart-city
experimentation ‘from scratch’, that is, planned
to unfold in newly built areas, with no former
residents or infrastructure and with purpose-
fully loose and flexible regulations and policy
routines. The cases show that the underlying
vision in such pilots, from the perspective of
smart-city transitions, is to have a sort of

‘blank-sheet’ in which the city’s sub-systems
can be more easily integrated through ITs from
the onset.
By starting these experiments—or simply
by announcing them (PlanIT Valley)—to a
larger or lesser extent, local governments and
transnational corporations ignited a number of
dynamics that can positively influence learning
and societal embedding processes of the new
technologies in society, both locally and with
an eye to other (less protected) places: mobili-
sation of companies and innovators interested
in the deployment and testing of the new tech-
nologies; attraction of R&D funding and new
investments; formation of front-runner coali-
tions; testing of new business models; visu-
alisation and raised expectations about new
technologies and solutions. Hence, even if the
opportunity costs of allocating public support
and private investments to such pilots remain
valid and open questions, the development of
smart-city pilots from scratch is not (necessar-
ily) an excuse to develop speculative real estate
projects—there can be important socio-techni-
cal dimensions and rationales involved.
The smart-city pilots explored in this paper
are still largely in a state of flux. However, their
success influencing larger ‘smart-city’ niche
structuration and socio-technical transitions—
through technological learning and societal
embedding—has been relatively narrow so far.
Paradoxically, the advantages of ‘blankness’ are
also their principal limitations. Despite the ini-
tial boost, PlanIT Valley has been struggling to
take-off; Songdo’s u-strategies have been los-
ing political momentum. In both cases, their
core technological propositions (for example,
UOS, TelePresence, machine-to-machine solu-
tions, embedded sensors) are being currently
deployed in smaller, potentially less ambitious
smart-city initiatives worldwide.
The recent credit constrains impacting on
both pilots (in the aftermath of the global
financial crisis of 2008)  do not tell the whole
story—the two cases reveal that many of
the limitations pointed to strategic niche
Smart cities from scratch?
management initiatives are heightened in ‘from
scratch’ pilots, limiting their learning and soci-
etal embedding potential over time: difficulties
nurturing socially rich innovation ecosystems;
dominance of corporation-driven technologi-
cal knowledge and limited user co-creation;
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tensions with the surrounding socio-political
arenas; wide distance from dominant regula-
tory and governance systems and perception
of elitism (for example, Lawhon and Murphy,
2012; Loorbach and Rotmans, 2010; Shove and
Walker, 2007). Table  2 synthesises the results
from the analysis.
The analysis highlights a critical tension—
and the need to strike a balance—between
empowering front running players (for exam-
ple, visionary entrepreneurs, industrialists,
proactive mayors) and the need to open the
experiment to local communities at large (for
example, Lawhon and Murphy, 2012). One
major limitation in ‘from scratch’ pilots is that
social and early innovation dynamics are per
definition limited, not only because of the dif-
ficulties filling in the pilot with (heterogene-
ous mixes of) residents but also because of the
inexistence of former sociability, knowledge
exchange and civic participation routines. As
a result, the visions, interests and (externally
developed) solutions of leading technology
proponents are weakly challenged/fine-tuned
and risk becoming overwhelmingly dominant,
creating user–producer divides. In this setting,
as the case of Songdo highlights, data-related
issues (for example, privacy and ownership)
tend to dominate the debate, while broader
processes of co-development between compa-
nies and users are relatively absent. The role of
the government does not seem to effectively
counter this tendency, being largely limited to
providing incentives and flexible regulatory
frameworks, thus reducing the learning and
societal embedding potential of the pilots.
The relation between the pilot and its socio-
political environment is also a critical point of
attention. Even if ‘from scratch’ pilots are ideal-
ised as protected from external regulations and
55
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Table 2.  Smart cities ‘from scratch’: socio-technical rationales and limitations.

Socio-technical experimentation Limitations
rationale

Technological learning • ‘Clean-slate’; early system • Immature innovation ecosystems

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integration
•  Testing flexibility • Dominance of (top-down)
technological knowledge; limited
user involvement (consumers
versus co-producers)
Societal embedding • Creating ‘momentum’ and • Tensions with socio-political
the formation of new actor environments in the host place
coalitions (erosion of support and licence to
operate)
• ‘Freedom’ vis-à-vis the physical, • Distance from real-life regulatory,
social and political structures of infrastructural and social contexts
the host place
• Early visualisation of integrated • Perception of elitism
solutions

Source: Own elaboration.

policy pressures, their host cities and regions
are not as pristine and function under complex
and evolving political environments, contesta-
tion and power relations (for example, Bulkeley
et  al., 2011; Shove and Walker, 2007). Songdo
and PlanIT Valley show that changes in sur-
rounding policy arenas and shifting views about
the costs and benefits of such pilots can become
closely associated with the erosion of societal
and political support for the pilot, as well as
with difficulties accessing financial resources
and a ‘licence to operate’. As transitions are not
races but marathons, this is a plea to consider
the evolution of smart-city niche experiments
in relation with the political dynamics of their
host cities and regions.
Moreover, the risk of early dry-up of the
public and private investments required for
smart cities ‘from scratch’ raises important
questions concerning the temporality of smart-
IT transitions. The literatures on strategic niche
management (for example, Schot and Geels,
2008) stress the need to gradually open up
experimental spaces to allow broader societal
embedding and more systemic regime change.
Yet, as the cases suggest, the erosion of support
and resources in smart city ‘from scratch’ pilots
seems to happen before processes of learning
and societal embedding can consistently start
to unfold (both in the pilot and towards global
niche formation) and before regulatory protec-
tions can be removed. The temporal dimen-
sion of smart-city transitions is so far a missing
dimension in the planning of such pilots, and
one that requires further policy attention.
Finally, smart cities ‘from scratch’ are illustra-
tive of a political and corporate discourse that
largely equates sustainability with the possi-
bilities opened by technology to improve effi-
ciency and to reduce resources’ consumption
(of energy, fuels, water, etc). However, from a
political ecology perspective, new technologies
often lead to similar or even increased con-
sumption levels (under new names) rather than
fostering broader changes in production and
consumption patterns towards reduced ecolog-
ical impacts (for example, Lawhon and Murphy,
2012). Moreover, current smart-city discourses
still tend to emphasise the environmental and
economic dimensions of sustainability and
much less its social and equity spheres. Hence,
as previously suggested by other studies, in

56

practice, there might be relevant conceptual
gaps between smart-IT city visions and other
eco-city notions (Joss et  al., 2013; Yigitcanlar
and Lee, 2013). So far, as the abovementioned
limitations show, smart-city pilots have a long
way to go if they are to tackle the challenges
imposed by more reformist notions of sustain-
ability (for example, Hopwood et al., 2005) and
transition projects that account for behavioural
change, power, affordability, social justice and
participation.
Conclusion and research avenues
This paper proposed a socio-technical approach
to analyse the contemporary development of
smart-IT solutions and its promises to re-shape
the functioning of cities. It suggested that more
than ‘technologising the way out’ of current
urban problems, a number of socio-technical
processes have to unfold—technological learn-
ing and societal embedding—so that new IT
solutions can effectively challenge current
regimes of urban provisions. This framework
was then applied to the study of two cases of
smart-city pilots ‘from scratch’: Songdo and
PlanIT Valley. The advantages, but also the
socio-technical limitations found in these pilots
suggest the need for great caution in their
design and implementation as the latter can
easily outweigh the first.
Hence, one important consideration for the
proponents of smart-city pilots is about how
protected should those pilots be. The cases
analysed in this paper are at one extreme of
a continuum between ‘highly-protected, from
scratch experiments’ and ‘piecemeal retrofit-
ting initiatives’. It can be easily imagined that
if the first reveals too much distance from cur-
rent socio-technical regimes (for example, full
integration of a city’s subsystem through ITs),
the latter are likely to be too proximate, find-
ing it hard to go beyond incremental innova-
tions. In order to derive more context-sensitive
planning tools for smart-city experiments, fur-
ther studies are needed that analyse different
Smart cities from scratch?
types of smart-city pilots from varied angles
(for example, ‘from scratch’ versus retrofitting;
state-driven versus corporate-driven versus
community-driven), with an eye to learning and
societal embeddedness outcomes.
The analysis of power relations within smart-
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city experiments is also an issue deserving close
attention. A  number of commentators have
been calling the attention to power ‘battles’
within smart cities (for example, Institute for
the Future, 2012) and to the potentially diver-
gent and/or multiple interests of its proponents
(Carvalho and Campos, 2013). However, there
is a dearth of conceptualisation in this field.
A  deeper analysis and conceptualisation of
power relations in smart-city pilots can benefit
from studies at the crossovers of socio-tech-
nical studies, human geography, urban studies
and political ecology (Bulkeley et  al., 2011;
Lawhon and Murphy, 2012). Moreover, those
conceptualisations can open new avenues to
(i) analyse costs and benefits of smart-city
pilots from a more nuanced perspective and
to (ii) look at smart-city transitions with an
eye to their contributions to steer broader sys-
temic change in production and consumption
patterns (beyond technological demonstration
and adoption).
One additional research avenue, also stem-
ming from this study, concerns the analysis of
smart-city experiments from a closer geograph-
ical lens. Beyond the socio-technical dynamics
of the pilot and of its host city, the cases suggest
that learning and societal embedding processes
taking place in smart-city pilots influence (are
influenced by) other scales and places—for
example, through the operations and changing
strategies of globally oriented IT corporations
in multiple locations. Hence, an analysis of
smart cities from a space-relational perspective
can benefit from—and contribute to—recent
geographical extensions in socio-technical
studies of innovation (for example, Carvalho
et al., 2012; Coenen et al., 2012).
All in all, the framework presented in this
paper provides only a first step to analyse
57
Carvalho
smart-city experiments from a socio-techni-
cal perspective, and to an emerging dialogue
between the literatures on sustainability
transitions, strategic niche management and
smart-city research. For example, research on
smart-city experiments could also inform some
of the contemporary challenges of strategic
niche management research pointed by Schot
and Geels (2008), specifically (i) the types of
‘protection’ leading to stronger niche develop-
ment processes and (ii) the mechanisms and
processes that contribute to the formation of
global niches out of local practices. Moreover,
the changing discourses, policies and practices
of smart-city pilots—from ‘smart technolo-
gies’ to ‘smart-er communities’ (for example,
Allwinkle and Cruickshank, 2011)—are closely
linked with the concerns of the strategic niche
management research. Collaborative research
across these fields could contribute to under-
stand how to enact wider communities and
existing social and political networks towards
broader societal transition goals.
Endnotes
1
For the case of PlanIT Valley, two additional inter-
views were conducted in The Netherlands and in
London.
2
For more detail, please see Carvalho et al. (2014)
and van Winden et al. (2012).
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to the Institute for Housing and
Urban Development Studies for their financial sup-
port (case of Songdo) and to all the interviewees and
colleagues who greatly helped during the field visits
and collection of empirical material, in particular
Jeroen van Haaren, João Bruno Campos, Inês Plácido
Santos and Leo van den Berg. A previous version of
the PlanIT Valley case study was presented during
a GREMI-T workshop in Paris (24 January 2012);
I thank Arnoud Lagendijk, Leila Kebir, Mário Vale,
Olivier Crevoisier and Roberto Camagni for their
comments. I also thank the two anonymous review-
ers who provided detailed comments and insightful
58
suggestions, greatly helping to sharpen and deepen
the paper’s arguments. Naturally, the usual dis-
claimer applies.
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