Public libraries in the smart city

All aspects trans-of the contemporary library have been influenced by these broad shifts: the way it looks as a physical space; the kinds of practices and behaviours it invites; the way

Public Libraries in the Smart City

Dale Leorke

Danielle Wyatt

Dale Leorke · Danielle Wyatt Public Libraries

in the Smart City

Tampere University

Tampere, Finland University of MelbourneBalaclava, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

ISBN 978-981-13-2804-6 ISBN 978-981-13-2805-3 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2805-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018956731

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

This work is subject to copyright All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights

of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction

on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: © Melisa Hasan

This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd

The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore

189721, Singapore

This book is the culmination of over two years of collaboration between

us encompassing research, writing, interviews, and countless visits to public libraries It began with a conversation about how strongly libraries seemed to be aligning themselves with wider visions of urban redevelop-ment and economic prosperity, and how little this had been addressed in the scholarly literature Our observations evolved into a public seminar,

a few conference papers, two research grants, a co-authored article, and

a white paper When we realised we had more to say on this topic, we embarked upon this book

We would like to begin by thanking the two people who shepherded this project from its inception: Audrey Yue, for her early encouragement and pilot funding support; and Scott McQuire, for his always incisive guid-ance, feedback, and input on the subsequent publications we produced together

We also extend our deep gratitude to the librarians, library ers, policymakers, and library users we interviewed for this project and thank them for their thoughtful, honest, and enlightening responses to our questions

manag-Finally, we would like to thank the colleagues and friends who vided advice, ideas, or timely direction along the way: David Bissell, Rachael Cilauro, Steph Hannon, Esther Hitchen, Rimi Khan, Ben Nicoll, and Nikos Papastergiadis

3 Mixed Metaphors: Between the Head and the Heart

4 Metrics, Metrocentricity, and Governance Models:

list of figures

Fig 2.1 Interior of the Geelong Library and Heritage Centre

Photograph by John Gollings, used with permission 19 Fig 2.2 The ‘Share’ Space at library@orchard in Singapore

Fig 2.3 One of the Singapore’s sophisticated movement-tracking

sensors, in situ at Sengkang Public Library Photograph

Fig 2.4 The AutoSorter book-sorting technology on display at

the entrance to Bukit Panjang Public Library, Singapore

Fig 2.5 A screen capture of the Unstacked web interface Image

copyright Elisa Lee and Adam Hinshaw, used with permission Unstacked is the result of the inaugural DX Lab Fellowship,

supported through a gift to the State Library of NSW

Foundation—a not-for-profit organisation which supports

key Library fellowships, innovative exhibitions, and landmark

Fig 2.6 SLQ Unstacked at the Knowledge Walk, State Library of

Queensland Photograph by Lance Scafe-Elliott, used with

Fig 2.7 Interior of the library@orchard in Singapore Photograph

Fig 2.8 The curved shelving design at the library@orchard

Fig 2.9 The NLB’s new-look book display, located at Sengkang

Public Library, which emphasises the integration of physical

and digital content Photograph by Dale Leorke 39 Fig 3.1 Exterior of the Geelong Regional Library & Heritage

Centre Photograph by Edward Blake, used under

Fig 3.2 The children and families’ space in the GLHC Photograph

by John Gollings, used with permission 63 Fig 3.3 Interior of the GLHC Photograph by John Gollings,

Fig 3.4 Exterior of the now-closed North Fitzroy Library

in Melbourne Photograph by Dale Leorke 74 Fig 3.5 Exterior of the Bargoonga Nganjin North Fitzroy Library,

opened in April 2017 Photograph supplied by City

Fig 3.6 Exterior of the State Library Victoria in Melbourne

Photograph supplied by State Library Victoria, used with

Fig 3.7 Artists’ impression of the new Information Centre

on the ground floor of the State Library Victoria

Photograph copyright Development Victoria, supplied

by State Library Victoria and used with permission 78 Fig 3.8 Artists’ impression of the Start Space mezzanine

in the State Library Victoria Photograph copyright

Development Victoria, supplied by State Library

Fig 4.1 The City of Melbourne’s Service Performance Indicators

for its libraries The four indicators—utilisation, resource

standard, service cost, and participation—are the only ones

requested by the State Government (Source City

Fig 4.2 One of the Toronto Public Library Board’s Key Indicators

for its libraries in 2016 (Source Toronto Public

list of tAbles

Table 2.1 A taxonomy of the technologies underpinning

Table 2.2 A taxonomy of the ‘smart city’ technologies now

Abstract This chapter introduces the key argument of this book, which

concerns the role of public libraries within the smart city We argue that the expansion of the library into other sectors of social and cultural life is connected to the economic development strategies of the cities in which they are built As we outline, this is becoming particularly apparent in

‘smart city’ visions, made possible by the ubiquity of networked nologies, which numerous cities are adopting to position themselves as efficient, innovative, and liveable The chapter situates this trend within broader contemporary debates about the library’s social and cultural sig-nificance, and provides an outline of the structure of the book

tech-Keywords Digitisation · Public libraries · Smart cities

Frank (Frank Langella) is the ageing protagonist of Jake Schrier’s 2012

film, Robot & Frank Suffering from dementia in a time marginally

ahead of our own, he is being cared for by a domestic robot His friend, Jennifer (Susan Sarandon), works at the local library Early in the film, Frank visits the library to return some books This vaguely Carnegie-style building looks familiar to us, a comfortable, shabby space where Jennifer duct-tapes the spines of some well-worn books on dusty wooden shelves The only incongruous feature here is Mr Darcy, a book-sorting robot, who, according to Jennifer, ‘does all the real work anyway’ Hunting down a book for Frank, Jennifer explains that she won’t be duct-taping

Introduction: More Than Just a Library

© The Author(s) 2019

D Leorke and D Wyatt, Public Libraries in the Smart City,

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2805-3_1

books much longer—‘a new non-profit is taking over the library, and they want to “reimagine” the modern library experience’.

Revisiting the library later in the film, Frank observes that this tion is well underway Books are being removed from the shelves to be scanned, digitised, and recycled Dusty shelving has been replaced with retro-futurist furniture, minimalist sculptures, and shared working desks

transi-A cool white light suffuses the space

This time, Frank is greeted by Mr Darcy, who has replaced Jennifer

at the reception desk ‘Where is the librarian?’ Frank asks Deadpan, Mr Darcy responds, ‘I am not familiar with that title’

When Frank locates Jennifer she is talking to Jake (Jeremy Strong), the non-profit founder funding the library’s renovation Jake says pat-ronisingly to Frank, ‘you must remember the days when this library was the only way to learn about the world […] I’d love to talk to you some more about your history with printed information You’re our connec-tion to the past, buddy’

The library depicted in Robot & Frank is not a vision of the near

future It is a commonplace experience for many library visitors today—robots and a few other features aside (for now, at least) Bookshelves are disappearing or receding into designated ‘collections’ zones Borrowing and library queries are increasingly being replaced by screen interfaces and automated services And the interior décor of libraries more often resembles an artfully decorated studio apartment or tech start-up’s office than the sober furnishings of the traditional Carnegie-model library.This fictional vignette encapsulates the transformation libraries are cur-rently undergoing around the world, capturing the visible changes many readers may have noticed taking place in their own local libraries Libraries began to incorporate digital technologies and platforms into their spaces from the late 1990s onwards And while this might have changed the library’s interior design, only in the past decade or so have these technolo-

gies begun to impact more fundamentally upon what a library is.

Robot & Frank also humorously taps into familiar anxieties about

how these changes will impact on the experience of visiting libraries as

we embark upon a future of ubiquitous connectivity, automation, and digital disruption Frank’s lament to Jennifer about the disappearance

of physical books—‘what’s the point of a library if you can’t check out the books?’—reflects concerns (whether empirically informed or merely nostalgic) about how a paperless future might influence how we con-sume, digest, and share information Meanwhile, the experience of being

greeted by a robot feeds into a growing ambivalence about an ingly impersonalised service delivery environment, as mundane labour is outsourced to machines, public help desks are closed, and service provid-ers turn to digital-by-default service models.

increas-Robot & Frank eloquently indicates that a study of the transformation

of the library, the subject of this book, is tied to broader philosophical questions It brings to the fore issues of social and economic value, ques-tions around how we retain continuity with the past and with others in our society, and of how we find comfort and meaning in what feels like a less human-centric world In part, when we talk about the library being

‘more than just a library’, these basic human concerns are never far from the surface They are, in many ways, what is at stake in the transforma-tion we explore here

* * *For millennia, libraries have been understood as media centres, rein-venting themselves around the technologies through which information

is encoded, organised, and accessed In our efforts to understand their more recent history as public institutions in liberal democratic states, the library’s need for technological innovation must be understood as inter-twined with its necessity for social invention Public libraries have always been responsive to the changing needs and ambitions of the societies they serve As such, they form part of the social infrastructure through which technology is embodied in social life (Wajcman 2002; Wyatt et al 2018)

Along with museums, galleries, and universities, public ies have been foundational to consolidating a shared public culture Providing universal access to information—however this might be materially embodied and defined—they support the capacity to criti-cally engage and participate in society But the public library is unique among other cultural institutions because of the way it has, as Shannon Mattern (2007: 1) identifies, ‘served multiple social roles’ at once, ‘even those that are not related to information services’ Public libraries have been charged with educating populations and conscripting them into

librar-a modern public sphere They hlibrar-ave served librar-a rlibrar-ange of more tal agendas, from childhood literacy to bridging the digital divide And when economic conditions have necessitated it, they have contributed directly to local economies by establishing commercial and trade depart-ments and supporting emerging industries (Black and Pepper 2012) As Mattern (2014: 4) has argued, ‘At every stage, the contexts – spatial,

instrumen-political, economic, cultural – in which libraries function have shifted;

so they are continuously reinventing themselves and the means by which they provide those vital information services’

While institutional reinvention is intrinsic to the history of the library,

it is clear that the last fifteen years has been a period of intensified formation This transformation has been widespread, following simi-lar patterns across library networks in North America, Europe, the UK, and parts of the Asia-Pacific Digitisation is central to understanding what contemporary libraries have become But so are other broad social changes related to an increasingly heterogeneous and diverse culture and the impacts of neoliberal governance on the funding and management

trans-of public institutions (Dudley 2013) All aspects trans-of the contemporary library have been influenced by these broad shifts: the way it looks as a physical space; the kinds of practices and behaviours it invites; the way it envisions and relates to its public; how it engages with other institutions and organisations; and the role it plays in the city, the neighbourhood, the community, and the economy

Recent library developments reflect the library’s responsiveness to a rapidly changing technological landscape Online archives seemingly threatened to make the library’s role as repository of knowledge redun-dant in the 1990s, and digital platforms challenged the dominance of the book as the medium for learning and information exchange When access to collections was no longer dependent upon access to the library

as a physical site, libraries were compelled to radically reimagine their institutional model While they have digitised their collections, becom-ing increasingly mobile and networked, this dematerialisation of the library as archive has gone hand in hand with an intensified attention

to physical space As the need to manage books and physical collections declines, libraries have invested in the idea of themselves as ‘third places’ (Oldenburg 1989): vital sites of public gathering, relaxation, and leisure situated between home and work

In multicultural cities where a shared culture cannot be assumed, libraries are particularly valued as places for face-to-face cross-cultural interaction and meeting (Audunson 2005; Audunson et al 2011) Libraries have actively encouraged this kind of informal use, investing in flexible and attractive furnishings and technological affordances like pub-lic screens and free Wi-fi to make people feel comfortable and at home

in their spaces At the same time, they have used their spaces in a more deliberate manner to attract new user communities and stimulate new

forms of use through targeted programming They have customised lections and services to address different language groups, age groups, and socio-economic and cultural backgrounds—like running homework clubs for school students, or digital storytelling workshops for migrant women.

col-Libraries are ‘meso-level’ sites (Mansell 2002) that mediate between the community and the state In their expanded form, they are assum-ing wider social significance, not simply as platforms for distributing knowledge, or as places for building community Rather, the library has become an important civic asset for addressing the opportunities and challenges of an emerging digital culture and the transition to a knowl-edge economy They are places that can accommodate the expectations, practices, and pleasures of a new generation of users, disposed towards

‘customization and interactivity’ (Holmberg et al 2009: 669) They are being relied upon by governments in supporting the digitally excluded—those who lack access to the basic technologies and literacies essential

to participating in society as a citizen (Jaeger et al 2012) And they are increasingly positioning themselves as innovation hubs of the new econ-omy, supporting entrepreneurial activity and the skills required to thrive

in a digital future

The transformation libraries are undergoing is multifaceted It can,

at times, appear contradictory This is partly because the library’s newer functions—developing infrastructure for connectivity and remote access

to their collections; providing users with the digital skills they need to navigate an online world; and providing enhanced spaces for the crea-tion of content—have had to be brought into productive relation with the more traditional aspects of the library as meeting place, archive, and repository of public memory But also, as flexible and adaptive institu-tions, responsive to both community needs ‘on the ground’ and more abstract governmental agendas, libraries are attempting to hold an increasingly divergent assemblage of different functions together within the one institutional model Paulina Mickiewicz, discussing the Rolex Learning Centre at a Polytechnic in Lausanne, could be talking about many contemporary public libraries when she says:

What is noteworthy about the Centre is that although it blends all the ments of modern library design, it is not called a “library,” providing a vast range of services and space – from the library and study areas to cafés and restaurants This is significant, as it suggests the current discourse that

ele-holds that libraries are no longer “just libraries,” but a hybrid of different specializations and services that have come together to create a new public space ( 2016 : 239)

Her account echoes much of the commentary on this new wave of library development, and the recent attempts to capture how this unwieldy institution should be framed and understood (Wyatt et al 2018; Mattern 2014; Weinberger 2012)

The expanded remit of the library is visible in the many investments

in high-profile public libraries occurring in cities across the world Typically, these libraries feature in large-scale urban redevelopment initia-tives aimed at reinvigorating urban centres, supporting jobs in the digital economy, and helping communities transition towards a ‘digital future’

As we recount in the next chapter, high-profile developments like the Vancouver Public Library (1995), Peckham Public Library (London, 2000), library@esplanade (Singapore, 2002), Seattle’s Central Library (2004), and Biblioteca Parque España (Medellín, 2007) typify this new status of libraries in the city Architecturally celebrated, these libraries focus as much on providing high-speed broadband and digital literacy workshops as on their physical collections and book clubs

Many are co-located with other community and commercial spaces: galleries, performing arts spaces, maternal and child health care centres, local council service desks, office spaces, shopping centres, and even pub-lic pools While this may be, in many cases, a gesture to convenience—placing core services together to increase accessibility—it also signals

‘a world of collapsing boundaries’ (McRobbie 2016: 15), in which the fundamental categories that have historically organised social life are no longer distinct and separate In contemporary public libraries, public space is permeated by private digital platforms, commercial spaces like cafés and bookshops, and other forms of private enterprise: social services overlap with cultural life As new networked media makes it easier and cheaper for people to produce their own content, libraries are support-ing people to turn their hobbies into commercial enterprises Conversely, hosting makerspaces, coworking spaces, and meetups, libraries facilitate social networking through which independent professionals and free-lancers are building social and creative communities The hybrid nature

of contemporary libraries is both a reflection of and contributor to this wider reconfiguration of the way we live, learn, and work

this book

It is clear that the reinvention of the public library has significance beyond the institution itself It is timely then, to examine the reasons for, and implications of, the library’s transformation and to attend to some of the tensions emerging in its wake This book makes the case for considering libraries beyond the cultural frameworks that have his-torically underpinned library scholarship Instead, it seeks to understand how powerful narratives around technological change, and the eco-nomic agendas attached to these, are shaping what libraries are becom-ing Important as physical space has always been and continues to be for the library, understanding the significance of this dynamic and hybrid site requires framing a study beyond the four walls of the institution We argue that the expansion of the library into other sectors of social and cultural life is connected to the economic development strategies of the cities in which they are built As we outline, this is becoming particu-larly apparent in ‘smart city’ visions, made possible by the ubiquity of networked technologies, which numerous cities are adopting to position themselves as efficient, innovative, and liveable

There have been numerous studies in both scholarly and policy nas of how digitisation is transforming the physical space of the library,

are-in terms of its architecture, are-interior design, and use of space (see, e.g., John 2016; Palfrey 2015; Sharma 2012) This literature is proficient at articulating the many ways spaces for experimental technologies, the presence of screens, and new kinds of programming are transforming the library’s role in the lives and practices of its users But this litera-ture often overlooks the connections between these changes and broader socio-economic conditions and narratives Historical studies of librar-ies suggest that their value lies in something more than the pedagogic kinds of exchange and sociality they offer to their immediate users within physical, face-to-face encounters As Alistair Black and Simon Pepper (2012: 440) argue, ‘By virtue of their status as communication media, the messages invested in, and generated by, library buildings are perhaps more meaningful and potent than those associated with a great deal of other material culture’ Many of the new services and roles contempo-rary libraries are assuming—supporting digital literacy and bridging the digital divide; allocating spaces and programs fostering entrepreneur-ship and innovation; and becoming ‘tech hubs’ and makerspaces to encourage creative production—participate in and advance visions of a

technology-driven, entrepreneurialist future Adopting these roles and functions, libraries not only shape users to be capable and fit participants

in a digital economy They market themselves as the visible ment of the ‘smart’, ‘creative’, and competitive image their city seeks to project

embodi-It is surprising, then, that very little attention has been paid to the relationship between the library’s transformation and the broader role they are playing in their cities’ cultural and economic development Similarly, there has been little theoretical or empirical research on the impact the intersection of libraries and smart city planning is having on the governance and funding of libraries, on how they relate day-to-day

to their communities, and on how libraries are currently understood

by city planners and policymakers This book aims to bridge this gap

It brings ethnographic research into conversation with evidence from a wide range of sources—policy strategies, planning documents, evalua-tion frameworks, library reports, statistics, and the wider scholarly liter-ature—to understand the relationship between the contemporary library and its dynamic urban context While it draws widely from documentary sources across Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, Europe, and the

UK, the ethnographic material is drawn primarily from case studies in the Australian cities of Melbourne and Geelong, with some supplementary material from the Australian state of Queensland’s public library network and from the National Library Board in Singapore Through this com-parative and contextualised approach, the book offers three overarching unique insights into the scholarship on libraries and smart city planning.First, it provides one of the first critical accounts of the relation-ship between libraries and urban planning policy Libraries are typically neglected in urban studies scholarship, with little research in urban planning journals and books devoted specifically to the library There is

a similar neglect in the urban planning policy literature where they are generally lumped under the broad category of ‘cultural infrastructure’ and cursorily examined alongside swimming pools, sporting clubs, learn-ing centres, and other recreational spaces As a result of this neglect, both the broader drivers and implications of the library’s dramatic trans-formation within the urban environment remain unexamined

Second, where existing scholarship on smart cities primarily concentrates

on the technological infrastructure and platforms that underpin smart city projects, this book examines how the smart city agenda is directly and indirectly shaping the imperatives of a specific public institution

As such, this book offers a reorientation of smart city scholarship from the bottom-up, illustrating how smart city agendas play out in an every-day space at the ‘meso-level’ interface between government and com-munity We consider how libraries are responding to the two pressures that led to claims about their demise in the early 2000s—the Internet and declining public investment—by reinventing themselves as flexible, adaptable, and innovative spaces that are now playing a central role in realising these visions We consider both the benefits and challenges this has created for libraries We argue it has enabled them to attract new funding and investment; but it has also created new imperatives and responsibilities that they are struggling to fulfil.

Third, the book offers a very immediate view of the current state of libraries by drawing upon recent interviews with a range of library pro-fessionals and policymakers (see Appendix A for a summary of interviews conducted between 2015 and 2017) These respondents are at the cut-ting edge of the changes and challenges libraries are currently experi-encing As such, they provide insight into some of the dissonance and tensions emerging between the large-scale visions of government and the day-to-day needs of library users and communities This ethnographic research with professional library staff also highlights the incommensu-rate regimes of value around libraries In particular, it draws attention to the ways in which current measurement frameworks fail to capture the expanded value of their work and the institutions they serve Through this ethnographic account, this book is able to draw attention to broader incongruities between the role that libraries are playing in urban culture and community life, and the governance models, funding structures, and measurement frameworks through which they are administered and managed

What we seek to emphasise throughout the book is that, while the smart city is a model of investment in tangible assets and expertise for urban management, it is also a ‘vision’, a discourse, and a form of rhet-oric and marketing (Greenfield 2013) As such, it is a means by which cities harness the public imagination, attract investment, and project themselves to their citizens and the world The smart city vision brings

to the fore a particular narrative about what is urgent and what is able in cities and for citizens There are many cogent critiques of the smart city itself as techno-deterministic and top-down form of urban control—which we explore further in Chapter 2 But notwithstand-ing these critiques, the library’s entanglement with smart city visions

desir-is significant for the way in which it conscripts libraries into a new set

of priorities and values, in tension with the values that have historically guided them as institutions This fraught entanglement is the subject of our study here

Chapter 2 unpacks the history of the library’s relationship to the smart city We trace this relationship back to the growing role libraries began to play in their cities’ cultural and economic policies in the late twentieth century in response to claims about their imminent demise The chapter outlines how this process is unfolding using examples from libraries in the Asia-Pacific, North America, South America, and Europe that function as central features of urban redevelopment and ‘smart city’ initiatives It identifies the key characteristics of this transformation: a sig-nificant investment in new library developments and redevelopments of existing libraries in certain urban centres; and the integration of new ser-vices and spaces into these libraries aimed at helping their communities transition to the digital future Through the case study of Singapore’s National Library Board, alongside other examples, we explicate the increasingly diverse and nuanced roles libraries are expected to play in their cities’ visions for future economic growth

Chapter 3 draws upon ethnographic research from Melbourne and Geelong to examine how libraries in these cities are being mobilised within particular smart city visions These case studies examine how smart city rhetoric is materialising through these libraries’ day-to-day reality We highlight how being conscripted into smart city narratives has reinforced and revitalised the importance of libraries to these cities But this has also imposed new expectations and pressures that are not being recognised by administrators and funding bodies These pressures, we argue, highlight how the vision of libraries as free, accessible, and invit-ing spaces—the heart of their communities—clashes with their new role

as engines of innovation and the knowledge economy

Chapter 4 compares the expectations for libraries to contribute to the smart city with the governmental measurement frameworks and funding structures through which they are managed Drawing on the case studies

of the previous two chapters, we highlight a startling disparity between the way libraries are valued rhetorically by their cities, and the terms through which they are evaluated and funded We illustrate this disjunc-ture in the way libraries are measured through evaluation frameworks, governed and funded by their cities, and concentrated in affluent, inner urban locales—often at the expense of outer urban and regional libraries

This prompts questions about the viability of libraries to continue to play a multitude of roles and the need to have their value recognised and embedded at higher levels of government.

We conclude this book with a brief Coda: Library Futures Here, we

reflect on our findings and gesture towards an alternative path for ies—one that frames them less as an instrument of the smart city than as its antidote, in service to the mixed impacts of a digital culture

librar-references

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and Digital Context Journal of Documentation, 61(3), 429–441.

Audunson, R., et al (2011) Public Libraries: A Meeting Place for Immigrant

Women? Library & Information Science Research, 33, 220–227.

Black, A., & Pepper, S (2012) From Civic Place to Digital Space: The Design

of Public Libraries in Britain from Past to Present Library Trends, 61(2),

440–470.

Dudley, M (2013) The Library and the City In M Dudley (Ed.), Public

Libraries and Resilient Cities (pp 1–35) Chicago: American Library

Association.

Greenfield, A (2013) Against the Smart City London: Do Projects.

Holmberg, K., et al (2009) What Is Library 2.0? Journal of Documentation,

65(4), 668–681.

Jaeger, P., et al (2012) The Intersection of Public Policy and Public Access:

Digital Divides Digital Literacy, Digital Inclusion, and Public Libraries Public

Library Quarterly, 31(1), 1–20.

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London: Winston Churchill Memorial Trust.

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Societies Current Sociology, 50(3), 407–426.

Mattern, S (2007) The New Downtown Library: Designing with Communities

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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from nal.org/article/library-as-infrastructure/

https://web.archive.org/web/20170701174111/https://placesjour-McRobbie, A (2016) Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Culture

Industries Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

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Public Space Space and Culture, 9(3), 237–250.

Oldenburg, R (1989) The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Community

Centres, Beauty Parlours, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get You Through the Day New York: Paragon House.

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Google New York: Basic Books.

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International Perspective (Vols 1–2) Berlin: De Gruyter Saur.

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Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20180306224252/https:// lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/09/future-of-libraries/by-david-weinberger/ Wyatt, D., McQuire, S., & Butt, D (2018) Libraries as Redistributive Technology: From Capacity to Culture in Queensland’s Public Library

Network New Media and Society, 20(8), 2934–2953.

Abstract This chapter examines how libraries are becoming increasingly

entangled in the economic agendas, planning policies, and development strategies of their cities We outline how this process is unfolding using examples of libraries across the Asia-Pacific, Europe, North America, and South America that function as central pillars of their cities’ ‘smart city’ initiatives and digital strategies We outline the twofold way in which this integration of public libraries into smart city planning is taking place First, through the integration of smart city technologies—sensors, dash-boards, and data analytics software—into the physical fabric of libraries Second, and most significantly for this book, the incorporation of new services and spaces into libraries that support the underlying agendas of the smart city—to transition citizens, businesses, and government into a

‘smart’, ‘creative’, and ‘sustainable’ postindustrial knowledge economy

Keywords Creative cities · Digitisation · Public libraries ·

Neoliberalism · Smart cities · Urban policy

What were the driving forces beyond the public library’s dramatic formation at the turn of the twenty-first century? How is the expansion

trans-of digital technologies into all areas trans-of life and work reshaping the ence and significance of public libraries today? And how has the library’s digital transformation driven new synergies between this cultural institu-tion and urban policy, now culminating in visions of the smart city?

experi-Beacons of the Smart City

© The Author(s) 2019

D Leorke and D Wyatt, Public Libraries in the Smart City,

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2805-3_2

This chapter sets the scene for understanding how libraries became entangled with smart city agendas Drawing from examples across the Asia-Pacific, Europe, North America, and South America, we demon-strate that while these entanglements are uneven and variously articu-lated, the relationship between libraries and the smart city is global in scale and stems from similar imperatives New library developments across the globe are bright lights in the city They signal the renewed prominence of a civic infrastructure that seemed to be slipping into the backwaters of public life, a mundane cultural institution considered inconsequential because it catered most to children and pensioners, and suburban concerns on the periphery of what counts as public culture But the light of the reinvented public library is ambiguous A beacon is both guide and warning In this chapter, we outline the forces shaping the evolution of the public library today, charting how it has come to be entangled in the smart city.

the reinvention of the contemporArY librArY

It would not be an overstatement to say that public libraries found selves in a state of existential crisis at the turn of the twenty-first century During the 1990s, many commentators observed the advent and global expansion of the commercial Internet and the subsequent explosion of information, texts, and multimedia circulating online These develop-ments led to countless claims that libraries would soon become extinct, and their bricks and mortar presence made redundant in the atemporal and immaterial ‘space of flows’ (Castells 2000) that comprised cyber-

them-space As one MIT Technology Review writer envisioned in 2005,

electronic reading devices will continue to improve until they rival the olution and usability of regular books At that point, the only burning rea- son for a physical trip to the library will be to see a copy of a needed book that has not yet been digitized, or that has been digitized but is not down- loadable due to copyright restrictions (MIT Technology Review 2005 : n.p.)

res-In this vision—far from unique at the time—libraries would be little more than ‘archives’ tended to by ‘preservationists’; visits to libraries would become as ‘anachronistic’ as using a payphone or posting a letter (Roush 2005: n.p.)

During this same period, as Paul T Jaeger et al (2014) observe, neoliberal economic policies threatened the funding of libraries and other public services through privatisation and budget cuts These pol-icies have been compounded recently by crippling austerity measures in response to the global financial crisis of 2007/2008 Library services have been systematically decimated as a result of austerity and the with-

drawal of public investment in the UK (BBC News 2016; CILIP 2016; Forkert 2016), Greece (Giannakopoulos et al 2014), and both federally and in numerous states in the USA (Dudley 2013: 4–5; EveryLibrary 2017; Kavner 2011; White House 2018) In addition, libraries have been targeted by budget cuts or funding freezes at various levels of gov-

ernment in Australia (ABC News 2016; Renew Our Libraries 2018), Canada (Keenan 2016; Ontario Library Association 2018), Germany (Heizereder 2016), Ireland (McGreevy 2015), and elsewhere.1

These immediate pressures on the library’s bottom line are pounded by neoliberal political ideologies hostile to ‘big government’ and publicly funded institutions As Jaeger et al (2014: 6–7) note, libraries are often characterised as outmoded ‘tax burdens’ no longer relevant in the digital era by conservative politicians and media outlets They write, ‘the fact that library activities and contributions to their communities cannot be easily translated into monetary terms makes them easy targets for budget cuts, a fact that has been all too apparent throughout the prolonged economic downturn that began in 2008’ (2014: 6)

com-As Michael Dudley also notes, public libraries have become targets

in a political climate where ‘the very notion of “the public” has come

under attack’ by the political right (2013: 6; original emphasis) Shannon Mattern (2014, n.p.) highlights how, within this climate, libraries are not merely fighting off calls for their defunding They are ironically also

expected to take on more responsibilities to fill the void left by the

dec-imation of other social services, even as their own budgets diminish Public libraries in the USA, she observes, have been reduced to ‘de facto community centres’ in the wake of a shrinking public sector (Mattern 2014: n.p.) They increasingly adopt multiple, sometimes conflicting, roles: informal homeless aid programs; shelters and ‘urban resilience’ centres during emergencies and environmental disasters; childcare cen-tres; voter registration and election sites; and classrooms during teacher strikes—to name but a few These roles are added onto their traditional ones, often without any additional funding to support them

As Kirsten Forkert (2016) has also revealed, it is not only librarians who are burdened with these growing pressures and responsibilities Library patrons themselves are also increasingly conscripted into the running of thinly stretched and under-resourced library services Her research on the campaign against the closure of five public libraries in Lewisham, London, in 2011, demonstrates how volunteers and advo-cates filled the void left by laid-off library staff, in a bid to keep their libraries open As Laura Swaffield (2017: n.p.) from the UK Library Campaign puts it, community members from all over Britain are pre-sented with ‘a stark choice: take over a local library or it faces closure’.Coupled with claims about the library’s imminent obsolescence in the digital era, these existential attacks on public libraries compelled them

to respond both rhetorically and practically Rhetorically, they mobilised commentators, scholars, library associations, and librarians themselves to vocally defend and reaffirm the ongoing relevance of their institutions in

an era of digitisation and neoliberalism

On public library advocacy sites, web pages listing reasons for the library’s continued importance in the digital era are not uncommon The newsletter Public Libraries News (n.d.: n.p.) advises that ‘88% of books are not online’ and warns anyone thinking digital platforms can replace public libraries that ‘even those online are not entirely safe’ from cen-sorship and removal from databases by Apple, Amazon, or Google In

2001, the American Libraries magazine published ‘10 reasons why the

internet is no substitute for a library’, including ‘not everything is on the internet’, ‘quality control doesn’t exist’, and—perhaps somewhat disin-genuously, in retrospect—the ‘headaches and eyestrain’ that result from reading e-books ‘for more than a half-hour’ (Herring 2001: n.p.) Its updated version, published in 2017, provides more timely reasons: librar-ies are ‘safe’ from ‘cyberbullying and trolling’; ‘respect history’ and ‘dig-itise influential primary sources’; ‘provide venues for creativity, learning, and community’; and ‘do not censor’ (Banks 2017: n.p.)

More publicly, author Nicholas Carr argues that memory is tied

to physicality and spatial navigation, so ‘libraries as spaces play a very important role in that’ (quoted in Peet 2016: n.p.) And responding to library funding cuts in North America and the UK, prominent writers such as Margaret Atwood (2017), Neil Gaiman (2013), Philip Pullman (see Page 2011), and Zadie Smith (2012) have vocally defended the piv-otal role libraries continue to play in their own and other people’s lives

In academic circles, librarian and scholar Jeannette Woodward (2013: chapter 5) links libraries to social policy, suggesting that they are more important than ever in an increasingly ‘crowded world’ She advocates for libraries as one possible solution to urbanisation, overpopulation, and the concomitant trends of decreasing home ownership, smaller house sizes, and reduced investment in public facilities Mattern (2007: ix–x) echoes these sentiments, writing that contemporary libraries have become liberated from niche stereotypes and can address many impor-tant civic concerns:

Unlike their turn-of-the-twentieth-century and midcentury [sic] sors, today’s libraries do not fit a mould In fact, many of them don’t even

predeces-“look like libraries.” In rejecting an obligation to conform to an tural type, today’s public libraries are free to choose shapes and styles that speak to the cities and populations they serve They are newly transparent, legible, accessible, responsive to context They facilitate new patterns of interaction with media and new patterns of library service In the process, they make possible new roles for the library patron and the librarian.

architec-And in a refrain echoed by numerous other scholars and librarians selves, John Palfrey (2015) argues that the proliferation of digital con-tent—and the devices and platforms through which it is accessed—make libraries more vital, not less In a ‘digital-plus era’, a magazine might be created using graphic design software and then printed materially This multiplicity of media formats, and content that straddles both the ana-logue and digital realms, makes trusted institutions, like libraries, vital

them-in helpthem-ing consumers sift through this (over)abundance of them-information (2015: 226–7) Palfrey’s argument builds on the notion of ‘Library 2.0’ which garnered traction in the mid-2000s This offshoot of Tim O’Reilly’s concept of ‘Web 2.0’ anticipates networked, collaborative media platforms and user-generated content as the ‘next step’ for the commercial Internet (see Maness 2006)

But the most visible and widespread response from libraries during this period has been practical, rather than rhetorical Libraries stand in contrast to other traditional industries—music, film, television, news-papers, and magazines—that initially resisted the forces of digitisation and networked distribution, largely to their own detriment Unlike these industries, most libraries swiftly embraced and assimilated digital technologies into their service model They became early adopters of

new technologies: 3D printers, virtual reality headsets, e-book readers, and various e-learning tools They serve as laboratories for experimen-tation with digital design and research And they remoulded themselves into dynamic ‘hubs’ that encompass multiple community services, cafés, galleries, and attractively designed interiors that could function both as spaces of leisure and comfort, and as spaces of work and ‘innovation’.Simplistic debates about the end of the library periodically recur—and perhaps always will.2 But libraries have become adept at shrugging off the doomsday scenarios predicted by futurists at the turn of the century They have instead staked their future on anticipating future technological trends and adapting to the opportunities and social challenges these pres-ent (Wyatt et al 2015).

The library’s transformation was first identified by architectural ars attuned to innovations in library design New libraries in a range of

schol-‘global cities’ attracted public attention through their scale and tectural significance In the Americas, there are the Vancouver Public Library Central Branch (Moshe Safdie and Da Architects, 1995), Seattle Central Library (Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus, 2004), Biblioteca José Vasconcelos in Mexico (Alberto Kalach and Juan Palomar, 2006), and Biblioteca Parque España in Medellín (Giancarlo Mazzanti, 2007) In Asia, the library@orchard in Singapore (original architects unknown, 1999) and Tama Art University Library in Japan (Toyo Ito, 2007) embody the contemporary library’s embrace of inno-vative and striking architecture And in Europe, the Black Diamond Library in Denmark (Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects, 1999), Malmö Public Library in Sweden (Henning Larsen, 1999), and Peckham Public Library in London (Alsop and Störmer, 2000) also stand as semi-nal developments in library design

archi-These libraries feature in architectural review magazines or lists of ‘top libraries in the world to visit’ They are characterised by a spatial porosity and careful coordination with their geographic location and surrounds (see Mickiewicz 2016) Many of these developments are co-located with other community and commercial spaces: performing arts centres (the library@esplanade in Singapore, 2002; Canada Water Library in London, 2011); shopping centres (Sello Library in Finland, 2003; Hjørring Centre in Denmark, 2008); as well as any combination of local govern-ment administration offices, maternal and child health care centres, and other community services

This architectural transformation also extends into the library’s rior The retro-futuristic aesthetic of the Geelong Library and Heritage Centre, Australia (see Fig 2.1 and our discussion in Chapter 3), exempli-fies a regional library embracing a striking and original interior aesthetic Singapore’s redesigned library@orchard (New Space Architect, opened 2014) features a circular, semi-enclosed reading and public gathering space (see Fig 2.2), and pod-like seats ‘inspired by nature to offer users

inte-a spinte-ace thinte-at is conducive for deep thought inte-and inspirinte-ation’ (Ministry of Communications and Information 2016: n.p.)

Although they are celebrated in architectural reviews and tic websites, the successful transformation of these libraries has yet to

touris-be fully contextualised within the economic and cultural development

of the cities they serve Much of the scholarly and mainstream debate about ‘the future of libraries’, while enormously valuable, has concen-

trated on the material transformation within the library itself (see some

exceptions: for e.g Arup 2017; Garmer 2014) Such work attends to the way new technologies and innovations in architecture have made a

Fig 2.1 Interior of the Geelong Library and Heritage Centre Photograph by

John Gollings, used with permission

visible transformation in library buildings But it is vital to recognise that

this internal transformation has external drivers in the discourses, cies, and ideologies shaping urban development Libraries have come to see themselves, and to be seen, as having a role to play in both the cul-

poli-tural and economic life of their cities As such, we need to understand the

broader narratives organising how cities envision their future

public librAries And urbAn policY

As Mattern recounts in her valuable book The New Downtown Library

(2007), ‘libraries have always played important roles in urban ment projects and in cities’ campaigns to reinvent their civic identities.’ She writes,

redevelop-Fig 2.2 The ‘Share’ Space at library@orchard in Singapore Photograph by

Dale Leorke

From the City Beautiful movement of the late nineteenth and early tieth centuries, to the dramatic changes America’s cities experienced as a result of the flight to the suburbs by middle-class Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, to recent considerations of what urban downtowns and their libraries mean in an era of exurbanization and digitization – through all these stages the public library has served key civic roles’ ( 2007 : 7)

twen-Mattern’s book focuses on what she describes as the ‘third wave’

of library development, following the Carnegie-era model and the mid-twentieth century ‘modern libraries’ that began to replace them (see Mattern 2007: ix) This ‘third wave’ was characterised by new library (re)developments—usually situated in central or ‘downtown’ locations

in American parlance—aimed at revitalising urban centres left dilapidated

by suburbanisation But it was also about reaffirming libraries’ vital social role in the context of claims about their obsolescence

As arguments were made for defunding libraries, municipalities and library managers increasingly turned to commercial justifications for library development They situated their role within broader metro-politan agendas and ‘explain[ed their] worth to the business com-munity’ (2007: 12) Managers and funders claimed libraries offered solutions to broader economic and social concerns In particular, libraries became beacons to revitalise declining urban centres as urban sprawl and the collapse of local manufacturing hollowed out the inner city

Libraries began to partner with renowned architects and architectural firms to develop innovative designs that would put their city ‘on the global map’ (Mattern 2007: 49), while strategically aligning themselves with the trajectory of their city’s urban development In two separate passages, Mattern encapsulates this shift:

As many cities draw residents back downtown, these downtown ies become the local branches for many center-city dwellers and work- ers, offering strong children’s programming, reading groups, community meeting spaces, and literacy programs Many cater to their neighbour- hoods, paying particular attention to “downtown problems” […] In short, these urban public library buildings have loudly and convincingly reasserted their relevance in this age of informational and urban sprawl ( 2007 : 34–7)

librar-[…] public libraries play several roles simultaneously: they respond to downtown patterns of movement; they relate to nearby cultural, residen- tial, and commercial developments; and they anchor revitalization districts, sometimes “legitimating” or “softening” these developments by inserting some free, public culture into an otherwise commercially driven program ( 2007 : 43)

Mattern’s book is American-centric, but nonetheless it is significant as one of the first—and still the most comprehensive—examinations of how libraries are funded and developed within the context of urban policy What she identified in 2007 as the third wave of library development—and continues to examine through her more recent work (see Mattern

2014, 2016b)—marks the onset of a more complex, increasingly biotic, and often fractious relationship between public libraries and the institutions that fund them

sym-The evolution and transformation of the role of libraries in urban nomic policy is closely tied to a broader transition within ‘developed’ industrial economies from manufacturing and industrial production to

eco-a knowledge-beco-ased economy driven by services, new technologies, eco-and innovation As manufacturing moves offshore to ‘developing’ countries and regions, cities have had to reconfigure their economies around a 24/7 networked global economy where service sector employment and knowledge workers fill the gap left by old industrial production

The city’s gravitation towards the ‘dream’ of a weightless ‘new omy’ (Amin et al 2000: 15), decoupled from material goods and organ-ised labour, has been a subject of analysis and critique since at least the 1990s (see Leadbeater 1999; Amin et al 2000; Amin and Thrift 2002) This program of economic reform has involved a succession of visions aimed at re-imagining urbanism These visions need not be thoroughly recapitulated here But each one has coalesced around the potential for networked infrastructure and digital technologies to reinvigorate the flagging economies of ‘developed’ countries

econ-First, from the 1960s onwards, city economies were reconfigured through intensifying processes of globalisation This involved the imple-mentation of free trade agreements and policies geared towards worker mobility that—together with networked technologies allowing instanta-neous global communication and economic transactions—converted key

‘global cities’ into ‘transnational space[s] for the circulation of capital’ (Sassen 1988: 1; 1991)

In the 1980s, deindustrialisation, urban renewal, and tion projects aimed to convert urban centres, abandoned by subur-banisation and the decline in manufacturing, into attractive centres

gentrifica-of knowledge production These fragmentary projects coalesced into the ‘creative city’ agendas of the late 1990s and early 2000s The cre-ative city was as much a marketing slogan as a blueprint for economic growth Premised on Richard Florida’s (2002) concept of the ‘crea-tive class’, it claimed that cities would thrive economically if they suc-cessfully attracted creative, mobile workers through policies promoting diversity, urban vitality, and the ‘soft infrastructure’ of lifestyle con-sumption Cities as diverse as Austin, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Jaipur, Medellín, Melbourne, San Francisco, and Singapore were praised for out-competing one another in attracting art, culture, design, food, and media industries to become enviable locations to live and work (UNESCO, n.d.)

Critiqued by commentators and scholars for privileging middle-class consumption over inclusivity and genuine cultural diversity (see Pratt 2008), the creative city has been all but rejected even by its founder (see Wetherell 2017) In its place, the ‘smart city’ has bloomed to fill the void, a vision of urbanism premised on digital technologies and their promise to unleash the city’s creative and economic potential

The smart city emerged out of the advent and expansion of tion-aware, digital infrastructure embedded into the fabric of the urban environment It envisions a technology-driven urban economy built on the efficiencies and innovation afforded by large-scale data sets, ena-bling real-time processing and analytics to act upon urban problems and behaviours (see Gabrys 2016; Kitchin 2014; Picon 2015) These top-down, policy-driven transformations have been accompanied by a radical reorientation of labour and the workforce Digitisation and automation are fragmenting patterns of work, giving rise to a more dynamic work-force compelled to adapt to a ‘just-in-time’ model of production, the

loca-‘gig economy’, freelance and mobile work The early phase of Internet jobs might have been heavily characterised by what Tiziana Terranova (2004) deemed ‘free labour’—unpaid workers conducting menial forms

of digital labour, like creating web pages But the rise of the gig omy or ‘share economy’, crowdfunding, teleworking, start-ups, app development, and related phenomena have since reshaped traditional industries, creating new jobs and decimating others, while rewriting our

econ-understandings of notions of labour, leisure, job security, and workplace relations (see Crary 2013; Gregg 2011; Huws 2013; Standing 2011).

In response, governments and policymakers around the world have embraced ‘digital disruption’, ‘entrepreneurship’, and ‘innovation’ as key pillars of their agendas for economic growth.3 These urban-cen-tric visions have been at the heart of policymaking agendas for over a decade, going almost unchallenged until the global financial crisis of 2007/2008 Since then, they have become the subject of a growing elec-toral repudiation by rural and ‘working class’ voters in the USA, UK, and E.U., leading to the rise of political movements dedicated to dis-mantling long-established policies favouring globalisation, free trade, and immigration (see Saval 2017)

As ‘flexible’ institutions that have successfully reshaped themselves around a digital culture (Wyatt et al 2015), libraries are being recog-nised as key sites in a range of urban renewal and regeneration projects centring around digitisation, innovation, and entrepreneurship This has taken place in three overarching ways First, and most visibly, they are becoming cultural and tourist ‘destinations’ in themselves: expensive developments of new and existing library buildings designed by ‘star’ architects have positioned them at the heart of regeneration projects aimed at revitalising the inner city (Mattern 2007; Schull 2009) Second,

as discussed, libraries have invested in new technologies, spaces, and grams to expand their user-base and demonstrate to governments their relevance and value to a wider public And third, under the mandate of preparing citizens for the impending digital future, libraries have invested

pro-in new expertise and developed partnerships with external organisations

to become centres for a wide spectrum of programs These range from upskilling ‘creatives’ and tech-savvy users, to supporting start-ups and bridging the digital divide through digital literacy programs

Faced with the interlinked pressures of digitisation and ing investment, libraries saw strategic advantage in aligning themselves more closely with the economic and planning agendas of the city author-ities upon whom their funding depends Today, libraries are reposition-ing themselves as essential components of cities that see themselves as

diminish-‘engines’ of the digital economy At the same time, they are responding

to the social ruptures and spatial disjunctures caused by these policies—precarious and mobile labour, fragmented working patterns, and geo-graphical displacement Rosie Spinks (2015: n.p.) puts it succinctly:

Taking into account the proliferation of freelancing, the gig economy, and remote-working […] the rise of library as community hub begins to make sense Cities are increasingly attracting location-independent workers, and those workers need space and amenities that expensive and unreliable cof- fee shops simply can’t provide enough of.

enter the ‘smArt citY’Libraries, then, have become both visible and attractive symbols of our near-future technological transformation, as well as practical instruments

to manage this transition into a ‘creative’ or ‘smart’ digital future On the one hand, they have physically reconstituted themselves as ‘cool’, attractive spaces—‘creative hubs’ situated in the heart of urban cultural precincts and recognised internationally for their ‘placemaking’ archi-tecture, innovative design, and cutting-edge technology On the other hand, they have extended their traditional role as community-serving institutions to reflect the cultural and economic imperatives of contem-porary cities, catering to the needs of ‘knowledge workers’, entrepre-neurs, and the growing precariat class

The simultaneous transformation of the library and rise of the smart city are not coincidental The smart city is both a distinct—and until recently largely conceptual (Greenfield 2013)—blueprint for the future city, and an extension of the ‘creative city’ and ‘knowledge econ-omy’ agendas that preceded it Smart cities are primarily envisioned as densely networked and ubiquitously connected urban centres that utilise

a range of smart infrastructure and devices to enable both new cies in urban governance and new opportunities for innovation, knowl-edge-sharing, and civic participation They involve the roll-out of smart technologies and infrastructure, usually through a top-down, city- or municipality-wide planning model This is conducted in varying degrees

efficien-of partnership with the vendors that manufacture and market ‘smart’ technologies—most prominently, IBM, Intel, and Cisco (see Greenfield 2013)

This roll-out takes place across three interrelated sets of technologies:

first, the physical infrastructure embedded in the urban environment—

sensors, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, global positioning system (GPS) trackers, and other ‘sentient’ or ‘internet of things’ (IoT) devices—that capture and transmits real-time data about that environ-ment (see Gabrys 2016; Mattern 2016a); second, the so-called ‘big data’

itself that is produced by this infrastructure, which are stored in server farms either in-house by technology firms or local government author-ities (Kitchin 2014); and lastly—and perhaps most centrally to the

smart city model—are the platforms that crunch this big data and

pro-duce real-time visualisations of the city’s functions and activities that allow city managers to monitor, intervene in, and manage them as they occur We summarise these three technological layers of the smart city in Table 2.1

As Scott McQuire notes, while smart city planning has a long legacy

in ‘older fantasies of urban control’, its specific applications have only

Table 2.1 A taxonomy of the technologies underpinning the smart city model

Description Examples

Infrastructure Sensors, smart/sentient

infrastruc-ture, and internet of things (IoT)

devices embedded in the urban

fabric that capture and transmit

real-time data about the urban

envi-ronment, buildings, infrastructure,

• smart electricity grids

• wearable health technologies Data The raw data about the city

produced by the above smart

infrastructure and extracted from

other sources (i.e census,

gov-ernment agencies, industry) This

data is stored and managed by

governments at the local, state, and

national levels

• pedestrian counts

• public transport schedules

• age and current use of buildings

• property values

• bike paths

• street furniture

Platforms Software and hardware that

con-nects to the city’s smart

infrastruc-ture and processes the raw data

it generates Consists of urban

analytics software, urban dashboards

and/or control centres that monitor

and manage the city in real-time;

open data portals that publish free,

anonymised datasets for use by

busi-nesses, entrepreneurs, and citizens;

and smartphone apps that visualise

this data for the city’s inhabitants

• IBM’s Intelligence Operations Centre

• Cisco’s Smart+Connected Operations Centre

• Socrata and CKAN’s open data platforms

• SeeClickFix and FixMyStreet apps

become a possibility in recent years with the widespread availability of networked sensors able to collect and store data He writes,

as the cost of networked sensors, data storage and analytic capacity have become lower by orders of magnitude, it has become feasible to collect data about all kinds of urban systems and behaviours, to process it and to apply it – potentially in real-time – so as to act on those same systems and behaviours ( 2016 : 37)

But as Antoine Picon (2015) also identifies, the image or brand of the city projected by this infrastructure and the way it is sold to both existing and potential inhabitants is just as important as any perceived or actual efficiencies it produces ‘Art galleries, performance venues, gastronomic restaurants and fashion boutiques’, he writes, ‘all pertain to the ecol-ogy that the knowledge economy requires, just as much as sensors, fibre optics and ubiquitous computing’ (Picon 2015: 45) In this sense, the smart city’s vision of seamless control and real-time responsiveness mim-ics the creative city’s embrace of tourism, liveability, progressive values, and vibrant cultural experiences as mandatory ingredients for successful economic growth Both agendas are tailored towards the imperative of contemporary cities to attract the coveted class of highly mobile knowl-edge workers that are vital to their sustained development

While the mainstream discourse around the smart city remains largely celebratory and optimistic, the scholarly literature is considerably more sceptical of its long-term value as a planning model Ash Amin (2014) and Adam Greenfield (2013) both characterise the smart city as a revival

of modernist urban planning, where the city is envisioned as a cohesive, holistic organism to be planned and managed from above This mod-ernist view has since been comprehensively repudiated by Jane Jacobs (1961) and many who followed in her wake Greenfield and Mattern (2016a) also raise concerns about the smart city’s technocratic, cor-porate-driven vision of seamless, fluid, and automated urban environ-ments, pointing out that inhabitants might want more from their cities than just instrumental efficiency Other scholarly criticisms of the smart city concern the inability for smart infrastructure to be flexible or adapt-able over the longer term as technologies become obsolete; the lack of concrete evidence supporting the hyperbolic marketing claims made by smart technology vendors; and the typically closed, centralised nature of

such systems (see Greenfield 2013; Hollands 2008; Picon 2015; Shepard 2014)—to name but a few.

Despite these macro-level scholarly critiques of the smart city model, governments and city planners around the world have enthusiastically embraced variations of it and begun rolling out its technologies and ser-vices in their cities and municipalities These sometimes take the form

of entirely new, as-yet incomplete, cities being built on greenfield sites—for example, Masdar City in the U.A.E., Songdo in South Korea, and Konza Technology City in Kenya But more often, they take place as part

of redevelopment plans that ‘retrofit networked information gies into existing urban places’ (Greenfield 2013: 12) Cities as diverse

technolo-as Auckland, Barcelona, Chicago, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Melbourne, Mexico City, Nairobi, Rio de Janeiro, Singapore, and Tallin fall into this category, leading the way in integrating smart technologies and services into their plans for future growth and development

This enthusiasm for smart technologies is also being shared by lic libraries, although it is unfolding on a much smaller scale Many are adopting some of the same smart technologies that underpin the smart city into their own architectural design and operations Singapore leads the way in this regard It has installed discrete sensors throughout the city’s public libraries that monitor the flow of people not only into the library’s entrance, but also between different rooms or sections The sen-sors provide library managers with detailed movement data—including how long people spend in each area and what type of activity they are doing (see Fig 2.3) These are complemented by an array of other sen-sors that help improve the efficiency and sustainability of the buildings themselves, including daylight sensors that adjust interior lighting when there is sufficient indoor natural light and rain sensors that turn off irri-gation systems after rainfall (Mutuli 2016)

pub-Singapore’s libraries also have sophisticated, fully automated book-sorting hardware and software, known collectively as the AutoSorter This suite of technologies mechanically sorts books into categories for easier manual shelving by library workers and volunteers

It uses analytics software to calculate the most popular books and oritise their display within the library While the system is in place behind-the-scenes in numerous libraries, increasingly it is being show-cased to visitors The newly redeveloped Bukit Panjang Public Library prominently displays the AutoSorter to visitors through a transparent

pri-glass window at its entrance (see Fig 2.4) The National Library Board (NLB) of Singapore has also trialled shelf-reading robots—reminiscent

of Mr Darcy from Robot & Frank (see Chapter 1)—that scan shelves for

misplaced items overnight and provide reports to library staff the next morning (Basu 2016) These various smart technologies demonstrate that the NLB is able to collect highly detailed data and generate sophisti-cated metrics about its patrons, spaces, and collections

Outside Singapore, the Sitterwerk Kunstbibliothek (Art Library) in

St Gallen, Switzerland, has completely eschewed the Dewey decimal system, removing all the labels and barcodes from its books and replac-ing them with embedded RFID tags In its ‘Dynamic Order’ system,

a robotic arm fixed to the library’s shelves scans the RFID tags in the books, continuously updating each book’s location on the catalogue in real time As the library’s website explains it,

Fig 2.3 One of the Singapore’s sophisticated movement-tracking sensors,

in situ at Sengkang Public Library Photograph by Dale Leorke

In contrast to a library accessible by means of conventional written labels, the books in the Art Library in the Sitterwerk do not have a fixed loca- tion They can, in principle, be placed arbitrarily anywhere in the shelves Thanks to the continuous inventory, every individual book can always be found even without a permanently defined location since the current loca- tion is always noted in the digital catalogue (Sitterwerk Art Library, n.d.: n.p.)

In Australia, numerous public libraries similarly employ sensors, data analytics, and other smart technologies In addition, some libraries are leading the way in data analytics Unstacked was developed by artists Elisa Lee and Adam Hinshaw as part of the inaugural DX Lab Fellowship

at the State Library of New South Wales The Unstacked platform yses the materials people are borrowing, reading, and using within the library at any given time and then visualises this in real time on a web

anal-Fig 2.4 The AutoSorter book-sorting technology on display at the entrance to

Bukit Panjang Public Library, Singapore Photograph by Dale Leorke

page that can be viewed on a computer, smartphone, or tablet (Lee and Hinshaw 2017; see Fig 2.5) In 2018, the project was also installed on

a large public screen at the State Library of Queensland, providing a live visualisation of borrowing patterns in the space of the library itself (Fig 2.6)

These ‘smart’ technologies and platforms provide library staff with new forms of data to inform planning and management as they incor-porate a range of new services into their operation.4 In turn, they extend the application of smart infrastructure, data, and platforms already being deployed by smart city initiatives into the microcosm of the library (see Table 2.2) These examples demonstrate a very literal intersection between public libraries and the smart city model But in this book, we also wish to draw attention to the structural and discursive connection between libraries and the smart city, one that has been largely overlooked

in the academic literature Public libraries, we argue, are becoming gral components of the ambitions that drive the smart city Libraries are

inte-Fig 2.5 A screen capture of the Unstacked web interface Image copyright

Elisa Lee and Adam Hinshaw, used with permission Unstacked is the result of the inaugural DX Lab Fellowship, supported through a gift to the State Library

of NSW Foundation—a not-for-profit organisation which supports key Library fellowships, innovative exhibitions, and landmark acquisitions