Grand Lyon Climate Plan- in the interest of the environment?
by Kim Nommesch
Going back to the Vision 2020 of Grand Lyon, Bruno Charles (Vice-President in charge of the Grand Lyon Climate Plan) states in an interview introducing the working document of the 2020 Vision for Grand Lyon, that the social impact of the upward evolution of energy prices renders a shift to energy-saving measures indispensable and speaks in terms of economic opportunity.
This is an essential point in understanding the objectives smart cities may pursue and the status of the environmental interest, which is presented as a driver for ‘smart’ urban development. We contacted several people from the Grand Lyon administration but up to this point, we have not managed to get direct information on how the vision of the future of Lyon was created, on the political process, where the inspiration has been drawn from and on the dynamics between the different actors involved. Therefore, I will base the following thoughts on impressions and conclusions (maybe assumptions) we have made. Moreover, we could so far, not identify stakeholders who openly criticise the concept of smart cities and the link to environmental protection. However, we think that it is important to include a perspective challenging this future vision of urban spaces and the way economic growth and natural environment are linked.
Similarly to Bruno Charles, David Kimelfeld, mayor of the 4th district in February 2014, links the vision of Lyon as a smart city to econmic development. When he presented the section on ecology of Collomb’s programme for Lyon after the 2014 municipal elections, he stated that ecology needs to flow with economic development
‘L’écologie doit s’articuler avec le développement économique (Solly 2014).
Looking at these and similar statements, we feel that consideration of urban economic development triumphes the concern about environmental degradation in both enabling and adapting to technological innovation (the foundation of smart city and development). Once again, this assumption gains ground when we look at the objectives, set up and priorities of the 2020 Vision Plan: the focus on reducing emissions is primarily connected to the consumer’s and producer’s interest in terms of saving costs and thus increasing economic benefits.
When we check the list with the partners who signed the Grand Lyon Climate Plan, what we see is the emergence of a coalition of public and private actors and professional associations (primarily from the transport, energy and industry sector), which can be placed in the wider context of the increase in public-private partnerships. Furthermore, there is an effort to design and create urban infrastructure based on new ways of connecting: data-sharing allows for closer cooperation between state, private actors and citizens. For instance, Grand Lyon puts at disposal a platform (Smart Data) where it makes public data available and allows operators to share their own data. These measures are expected to develop and provide new services, facilitating transport and mobility in particular.
As a consequence, the local government takes on a new role: it coordinates the discourse and policies more than being at the origin of it. This is also where the notion of ‘subpolitics’ becomes relevant. Gerard De Vries uses this concept to decribe how political action takes place and enters the political arena without being recognised as such by political scientists (Latour 2007). Scientists and engineers could be understood as political actors in the sense that they create a new discourse, situation and framework within which public administrations have to act and adapt to. They influence the way subjects (in De Vries’ terms mini-kings with particular interests and preferences) interact with politicians and assume a role they may not have planned to take on. Not the individual, which according to Walter Lippmann ‘does not have opinion on public affairs and does not know to direct them’ (1927:29), determines the issue that enters into the debate, but scientists in the field of climate, ICT and engineering, even if this happens unintentionally.
The trends we are observing leads us to the question about who takes care of nature in this new paradigm: is it the state, private companies, scientists, individuals or should we put the question differently and assume that nature should or is taking care of itself? If we assume the latter, we need to return to Lovelock and his theory of Gaia, according to which the earth is a self-regulating system and maintains a steady state climate. Yet, in the age of the Anthropocene, the impact of human activity is so large that it disables the earth’s capacities for self-regulation and suggests that the earth is unable to take care of itself. Given this fact, we could assume that humans, and institutions set up by humans, have to alter interactions with or rather within nature, if we see nature and humanity as one. However, Lovelock would intervene at this point to say that it is too late to reverse the impact of human activity. This blog entry does not provide the scope to further discuss who of the other actors should be responsible for the protection of the environment.
Concluding these thoughts, the idea of smart city seems a half-hearted try to reduce the impact on the environment. Analysing the discourse on smart city, the environment is thought of as a single entity which can be used as a mere tool to stimulate economic development and increase competitiveness among cities by bolstering innovation and saving production costs. It is a way to support the economic interest of consumers and producers, while protecting our natural environment emerges as a positive side-effect. At the same time, we have observed a changing role of public administration, which has taken on a coordinating role of discourse
References
De Vries, G. (2007). ‘What is Political in Sub-politics?: How Aristotle Might Help STS’ in Social Studies of Science. Vol. 32, pp.781-809.
Latour, B. (2007). ‘Turning Around Politics: A Note on Gerard de Vrie’s Paper’ in Social Studies of Science. Vol. 37 No. 5,pp. 811-820.
Lippmann,W. (1927). The Phantom Public. The Macmillan Company.
Solly, B, (2014). ‘Municipales 2014. Gérard Collomb dévoile ses ambitions pour Lyon’ in Lyon People. published on 28th February 2014. http://www.lyonpeople.com/politique/municipales-2014-gerard-collomb.html (accessed on 8th March 2014).
