From social interaction to societal discourse: An ordonomic analysis of the smart city

The Smart City concept purports to address and reconcile the social, economic, and environmental challenges of the urban environment for the benefit of residents' quality of life. However, practical implementations have been jaded, with disproportionate emphasis on the economic aspects of the urban milieu. This disproportionate emphasis is what we explore in this article. There is an overemphasis on a dichotomous techno-centric vs. human-centric interpretation of the smart city and the ‘appropriate’ means of achieving it. We posit that the current misalignment between the smart city concept and practice is due to incongruence between different levels of conceptualization. To mend this, we induce the theory driven framework of ordonomics to take a conceptual step back and reconceptualize the smart city at its core. Ordonomics is a lesser-known approach to economic and business ethics, heretofore unused in the smart city discourse. This conceptual paper reconsiders the smart city concept and practice through a multi-tiered ethical lens, wherein the normativity of the smart city concept sits at a higher-level of abstraction with significant cascading implications for practice. We develop a conceptual ordonomic framework of the smart city, which reconceptualizes the techno vs. human-centric dichotomy as a dualistic phenomenon of the Smart city. In so doing, we demonstrate how rising to a higher level of abstraction enables identification of common objectives within the urban development discourse, movement away from a dualistic mentality, realignment of the smart city concept and practice, and enable effective policy implementation.