Description:
This innovative book applies the metaphor of Dracula to understand a highly controversial reality that marks so many cities today: how the rage of smart city development and growth proceeds, is organized, and produces benefits for some and afflicts others.
Review Quotes:
"A riveting and intellectually sophisticated book that blends the analytical strength of critical urban studies with the evocative power of gothic literature. The prose is superb and Wilson and Wyly masterfully take the reader on a journey, across the Global North and South, to explore the darkest corners of smart urbanism. Dracula Urbanism and Smart City Mania will change the way you see smart cities."
- Federico Cugurullo, Trinity College, Dublin
"Wilson and Wyly's Dracula Urbanism is a fascinating work of synthesis. In it, they excavate the intricate Stoker classic and apply it to contemporary urban processes, particularly the pursuit of smart cities. Like the classic novel, the smart cities discourse seeks to weed out the old with a moralizing tale of progress that obscures real processes of violence and exclusion. This is easily one of the most imaginative urban geography texts written in decades."
- Jason Hackworth, University of Toronto
"Using Dracula's techno-solutionist quest for a society that serves those deemed deserving and putatively punishing all others, Wilson and Wyly's compelling book makes the case that today's urban politics and governance produces monstrous cities. Bold and imaginative in vision, it invites us to rethink the quest for supposed smart cities."
- Rob Kitchin, Maynooth University