1171 | 588 | Solution in Search of a Problem? Data-Driven Innovation and the Politics of Certainty in the Edinburgh City Region

How do issues such as slow growth and inequality become problems of AI and innovation? This paper addresses the politics of AI in smart urban-regionalism by shedding light on the influence of scientific expertise in urban governance. Drawing on documentary research, 50 interviews and ethnographic observations, it empirically engages with the implementation of a contemporary urban-regional redevelopment project, the Edinburgh and South-East Scotland City Region Deal (CRD). A £1.3bn infrastructure investment by the Scottish and UK governments and local partners over fifteen years, the CRD is designed to accelerate data-driven innovation and inclusive growth. Officially signed in August 2018, it represents a unique case study for at least two reasons: first, it constitutes the first higher education-driven city region deal in the UK. Second, it aligns a cluster of considerably powerful actors – political leaders, higher education officials, tech entrepreneurs – around one specific sociotechnical imaginary: establishing the city region as the “Data Capital of Europe”. Conceptually rooted at the intersection of STS and urban studies, the paper argues that reconceptualising the Edinburgh city region as a relevant space of innovation and positioning the University of Edinburgh as its key projective agent required a process of apoliticisation. Defining the latter as the orchestration of temporal ruptures, it demonstrates how powerful scientific actors mobilise language, location and data science in order to construct an imaginary of fixed and scripted, indeed, inevitable, urban futures. As a result, key decision-makers engage in, what can be called, a “politics of certainty”, which separates technoscientific progress from political intent.

Nicolas Zehner
University of Edinburgh

ID Abstract: 588