(Digital) neo-colonialism in the smart city

The critical research agenda on smart cities has become increasingly interested in the political–economic relations between digital technologies and everyday urban life. It is now clear that city, quotidian activities have valorized as data, are produced, extracted circulated with little, if any, remuneration to those individuals from whom they been abstracted. Smart-city scholars often call this process ‘digital colonialism’ highlight uneven of power enable processes dispossession profit generation. In article we argue greater conceptual clarity needed around colonialism. Specifically, what called entails more characteristic neo-colonialism. By teasing out differences colonialism neo-colonialism, different illuminated, allowing us theorize city nuance. Here, focus epistemological claims, practices legibility repercussions emerge when focusing attention latter. We show neo-colonialism also requires political strategies resistance than its colonial counterpart, grapple multiple ways which technology formulated strategies. advocate for a collective, structural shift how data deployed within city. To substantiate these draw long-term, ongoing database ethnography Calgary, Alberta, Canada.