Beyond the control room:

the smart (sustainable?) pathway of Rio de Janeiro in times of crisis

Abstract

Rio de Janeiro has been a textbook example of the limitations of smart city development, epitomized by IBM´s control room developed in the heyday of the city´s Olympic agenda. Over the last years, the smart city discussion has expanded to include notions of sustainable development in the form of a “smart-sustainable” perspective to urban planning, observed by the increasing concern with socio-environmental aspects, beyond those of strictly economic and technological nature. This paper draws on 61 initiatives to analyse how the city´s smart ambitions have evolved in this respect, scrutinizing domains, stakeholders, and focus, namely under a new context of political turmoil and budget restrictions. While most initiatives suggest weak collaborative environments and tensions between smart and sustainability ambitions, there is evidence that stagnation co-exists with the blurring between top-down and bottom-up initiatives, opening new challenges to understand smart-sustainable city development in crisis-ridden and budget-scarce cities.