Publications by year
In Press
Caprotti F, Liu D (In Press). Platform urbanism and the Chinese smart city: the co-production and territorialisation of Hangzhou City Brain.
GeoJournal: an international journal on human geography and environmental sciencesAbstract:
Platform urbanism and the Chinese smart city: the co-production and territorialisation of Hangzhou City Brain
We analyse an urban platform (Alibaba’s City Brain) to show how smart city development is evolving in urban China. In order to do so, we base our analysis on two strands of literature: that on platform urbanism, and on the experimental city. The paper identifies two processes that are shared across both bodies of work on platform urbanism and experimental cities: relational co-production and territorialisation. These processes can also be applied to the case of City Brain as both a platform and an urban experiment. We conclude by reflecting on the significance of urban platforms on the co-production of data-enabled urban governance; local urban context; and citizenship.
Abstract.
Caprotti F (In Press). Rethinking the off-grid city.
Urban GeographyAbstract:
Rethinking the off-grid city
There has been a resurgence in interest in the off-grid city, with a focus on off-grid urban spaces in the Global South, and on how the off-grid functions as a collection of places, lived spaces, and dynamic infrastructural configurations. As scholars and practitioners working in the off-grid urban context in South Africa, we contend it is necessary to question the assumptions of the “off-grid” concept in urban geography in terms of its implications for conducting research. We thereby identify four areas for further conceptual and empirical elaboration. The first area concerns the importance of continuing to redefine academic and practical understandings of the “grid”, ultimately moving to redefine its meaning in the city. The second is a need to decolonise and decentre the relationship between global and technocratic urban development “standards”, practices and discourses, and the granular off-grid context. The third area is the imperative of critically engaging with narratives of inadequacy and imperfection as often applied to off-grid, informal urban spaces. The fourth is the priority of moving towards a needs-based approach to off-grid development, with a focus on co-production of urban knowledge with local communities to ensure their needs and interests are met.
Abstract.
Caprotti F, Gong Z (In Press). Social sustainability and new residents' experiences in a new Chinese eco-city.
Habitat InternationalAbstract:
Social sustainability and new residents' experiences in a new Chinese eco-city
The article argues for a “humanizing” research agenda on newly-built forms of eco-urbanism, such as eco-cities. Taking the example of the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City, China, the article focuses on urban social sustainability with a specific focus on the lived experiences of new residents of the newly-built eco-city. Drawing on Jane Jacobs' work on the spaces of the city, the article's focus on residents' experiences underlines the key importance of social sustainability when analysing new flagship urban projects, and highlights the need to consider the relational networks of lived experiences of the city as well as the visions and techno-social designs of planners, policymakers and corporate actors in the development of eco-city projects.
Abstract.
Caprotti F, Gong Z (In Press). Social sustainability and residents' experiences in a new Chinese eco-city. Habitat International
Joss S, Sengers F, Schraaven D, Caprotti F, Dayot Y (In Press). The Smart City as global discourse: storylines and critical junctures across 27 cities.
Journal of Urban TechnologyAbstract:
The Smart City as global discourse: storylines and critical junctures across 27 cities
Despite its growing ubiquitous presence, the smart city continues to struggle for definitional clarity and practical import. In response, this study interrogates the smart city as global discourse network by examining a collection of key texts associated with cities worldwide. Using a list of 5,553 cities, a systematic webometric exercise was conducted to measure hit counts produced by searching for ‘smart city’. Consequently, 27 cities with the highest validated hit counts were selected. Next, 346 online texts
were collected from among the top 20 hits across each of the selected cities, and comprehensively analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively using AntConc software. The findings confirm the presence of a strong globalising narrative which emphasises world cities as ‘best practice’ models. Moreover, they reveal the smart city’s association – beyond the quest for incremental, technical improvements of current urban systems and processes – with a pronounced transformative governance agenda. The article identifies five critical junctures (interlocking discourses) at the heart of the evolving smart city discourse regime; these shed light on the ongoing boundary
work in which the smart city is engaged and which contain significant unresolved tensions. The paper concludes with a discussion of resulting implications for research, policy and practice.
Abstract.
2022
Caprotti F (2022). Beyond the smart city: a typology of platform urbanism.
Urban TransformationsAbstract:
Beyond the smart city: a typology of platform urbanism
Platform urbanism has emerged in recent years as an area of research into the ways in which digital platforms are increasingly central to the governance, economy, experience, and understanding of the city. In the paper, we argue that platform urbanism is an evolution of the smart city, constituted by novel, digitally-enabled socio-technical assemblages that enable new forms of social, economic and political intermediation. We offer a typological framework for a better conceptualization of platform urbanism and its complex socio-economic relationships. We further outline several directions for future research on platform urbanism, specifically: a.) the need to critically investigate new power geometries of corporate, legal and regulatory alignments; b.) how platform urbanism may be expressed in, and affect, cities in the Global South; c.) how it may need to be critically engaged with in regard to its development in response to emergent events such as the Covid-19 pandemic; and d.) how it may shape visions of the current and future city.
Abstract.
Mathebula N, de Groot J, Moorlach M, Caprotti F, Butler C, Schloemann H, Densmore A, Finlay K (2022). Does basic off-grid energy access improve well-being in off-grid informal settlements? a field experiment with off-grid solar power in Cape Town. 3rd Energy and Human Habitat Conference. 28th - 29th Nov 2022.
Abstract:
Does basic off-grid energy access improve well-being in off-grid informal settlements? a field experiment with off-grid solar power in Cape Town
Abstract.
Cantoni R, Caprotti F, de Groot J (2022). Solar energy at the peri-urban frontier: an energy justice study of urban peripheries from Burkina Faso and South Africa.
Energy Research and Social ScienceAbstract:
Solar energy at the peri-urban frontier: an energy justice study of urban peripheries from Burkina Faso and South Africa
Most of the global population that lack access to electricity services live in sub-Saharan Africa. Peri-urban areas of large African cities, often characterized by the presence of informal settlements, exist in a kind of ‘scalar limbo,’ unable to benefit from either access to the city grid or from programs aimed at the electrification of rural areas. In addition, in those areas where lack of electricity access is common, energy poverty combined with proximity to the grid leads to a greater likelihood of illegal energy supply arrangements. In this fieldwork-based study, conducted through population surveys and interviews in the peripheries of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and Cape Town, South Africa, we employ a hybrid theoretical framework, based on work in urban political ecology and energy justice, to analyze the situation of electricity access in the two areas. We find that the planned scale, scope, and technological design of solar energy projects in peripheral areas are crucial in determining whether and how a project will be beneficial for local communities. This study provides guidance beyond academia to national and international policymakers and executives of renewable energy companies, as well as tools for a more in-depth assessment of energy justice issues.
Abstract.
Xu Y, Caprotti F, Zhang W, Pan M (2022). The socioenvironmental state and urban transitions: Eco-urbanism in China and the UK.
Environment and Planning E: Nature and SpaceAbstract:
The socioenvironmental state and urban transitions: Eco-urbanism in China and the UK
Eco-urbanism encapsulates a range of approaches to the management of urbanization processes and environmental imperatives in contexts of rapid industrial and economic change. The paper focuses on two eco-urban initiatives in China and the UK over a temporal lens stretching from the mid-2000s to the early 2020s, in order to critically engage with the question of how eco-urban projects develop and often undergo radical changes over time, as well as being changed through significant ruptures, periods of stasis, and fluidity in the actor-networks involved in project visions, financing and development. Our comparative approach identifies cross-cutting processes operative across two projects at different scales and in different techno-political contexts. The paper argues that longitudinal analysis is key to enabling a view of transitional trajectories as unfolding, and as a way of moving past oft-repeated assessments of specific projects according to a “failure/success” binary. In order to do so, the paper considers eco-urban projects through a theoretical lens that views projects as unstable assemblages exhibiting change over time on the one hand, but that also recognises the dynamic resilience of geographical imaginations around eco-urban projects, that means that these projects endure (albeit often in different guises) over time.
Abstract.
2021
Caprotti F, Phillips J, Petrova S, Bouzarovski S, Essex S, de Groot J, Baker L, Reddy Y, Wolpe P (2021). 'Candles are not bright enough': inclusive urban energy transformations in spaces of urban inequality?. In (Ed)
African Cities and Collaborative Futures Urban Platforms and Metropolitan Logistics, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Abstract:
'Candles are not bright enough': inclusive urban energy transformations in spaces of urban inequality?
Abstract.
2020
Caprotti F, Essex S, Phillips J, de Groot J, Baker L (2020). Scales of governance: translating multiscalar transitional pathways in South Africa’s energy landscape.
Energy Research and Social ScienceAbstract:
Scales of governance: translating multiscalar transitional pathways in South Africa’s energy landscape
In this paper, we argue for a multiscalar focus on the governance of energy policy and practice. This perspective reveals the translation of agendas and policies across scales stretching from the global to the local. We analyse South Africa’s energy landscape, which is influenced by: a highly complex and dynamic set of generation and production networks, policy strategies, multiple state and non-state actors, and the continuing impact of apartheid. In the paper, we establish a dialogue between Actor-Network Theory and studies of socio-technical transitions to analyse the translation and purification of discourses and practices across scales, and to consider how these processes may impact on spatialised processes of energy transition.
Abstract.
Caprotti F (2020). Smart to green: smart eco-cities in the green economy. In Willis K, Aurigi A (Eds.)
The Routledge Companion to Smart Cities, Routledge.
Abstract:
Smart to green: smart eco-cities in the green economy
Abstract.
2019
Caprotti F (2019). Emerging platform urbanism in China: reconfigurations of data, citizenship and materialities.
Technological Forecasting and Social ChangeAbstract:
Emerging platform urbanism in China: reconfigurations of data, citizenship and materialities
In this article, we argue for an extension of current debates on smart urbanism in China by focusing on the emergence of urban platforms as a key way in which Chinese cities are developing into digitally-enhanced and governed urban areas. China has undergone multiple rounds of thematic urban development, culminating in a recent policy focus on the smart city and on digitally-enhanced urbanism. We argue that this has now evolved, and outline the rapidly emerging phenomenon of platform urbanism, which we conceptualise as not only confined to the policy sphere, but as stretching across the policy-governance-corporate nexus, the market, and urban consumption practices and broader culture. We do so by focusing on key themes emerging in contemporary platform-based digital urban development in China: a.) the rapidly developing geography of urban platforms; b.) a swiftly expanding mass of data and its implications for state-private sector power geometries; c.) domestic urban policy and practice mobilities, and consequences for the circulation of digital urban platforms between cities and across national boundaries; d.) implications for a reconfiguration of urban citizenship; e.) new configurations of urban materialities in the digital platform era. We conclude with brief reflections on data-led urbanism in contemporary China.
Abstract.
Caprotti F (2019). From Shannon to Shenzhen and back: sustainable urbanism and inter-city partnerships in China and Europe. In Zhang X (Ed)
Remaking Sustainable Urbanism: Space, Scale and Goivernance in the New Urban Era, Palgrave Macmillan, 101-120.
Abstract:
From Shannon to Shenzhen and back: sustainable urbanism and inter-city partnerships in China and Europe
Abstract.
Caprotti F, Cowley R (2019). Varieties of smart urbanism in the UK: discursive logics, the state, and local urban context.
Transactions of the Institute of British GeographersAbstract:
Varieties of smart urbanism in the UK: discursive logics, the state, and local urban context
The paper analyses the varieties of smart urbanism to be found in the contemporary urban landscape in the UK. In so doing, it builds on and extends two currently dominant sets of critiques of the smart city: those that call into question its technocratic and top-down modes of governance, and those that describe the smart city as an empty signifier. The paper makes sense of the UK’s variegated local smart urban practices, by tracing the emergence of a national, state-led cultural economy of smart urbanism. Based on an analysis of smart city programmes in 34 UK cities, we identify two broad discursive logics through a national variation of smart urbanism is produced and performed. First, the invocation of crisis forms a discursive foundation on which place-specific logics are based. Second, a set of what we term variegated logics are differently combined to build on the ‘foundational story’ of crisis, in the construction of local smart agendas. We discuss three of these variegated logics: the city portrayed as technological simulacrum; the focus on specific sectoral activities; and a chameleonic tendency to envelop previous eco-urban agendas into smart urbanism. The critical questions raise by these UK-specific logics demonstrate the value of considering particular multi-scalar constellations of smart urbanism through a cultural economy lens.
Abstract.
2018
Caprotti F (2018). Authoritarianism and the transparent smart city. In (Ed) The Routledge Companion to Urban Imaginaries, 137-146.
Caprotti F (2018). Authoritarianism and the transparent smart city. In Lindner C, Meissner M (Eds.)
The Routledge Companion to Urban Imaginaries, London: Routledge, 137-146.
Abstract:
Authoritarianism and the transparent smart city
Abstract.
Karvonen A, Cugurullo F, Caprotti F (2018). Conclusions: the long and unsettled future of smart cities. In (Ed) Inside Smart Cities: Place, Politics and Urban Innovation, London: Routledge, 291-298.
Caprotti F (2018). Future cities: moving from technical to human needs.
Palgrave CommunicationsAbstract:
Future cities: moving from technical to human needs
The article argues for a foregrounding of human needs at the heart of urban societal futures. While economic, technical and environmental imperatives are understandably the focus of policymaking and governance arrangements at national and supra-national scales, defining and targeting priorities in the ‘ordinary’ city is key. The argument is that it is now time to place basic human needs (as enshrined both in international agreements and in the more prosaic conditions of specific cities) at the centre of thinking and planning for future cities. The piece therefore proposes that plans for urban futures start from an elaboration of contextually sensitive as well as internationally negotiated needs rather than from macro-scale and potentially ephemeral visions of glittering technological future metropoles.
Abstract.
Karvonen A, Cugurullo F, Caprotti F (eds)(2018).
Inside Smart Cities: Place, Politics and Urban Innovation. London, Routledge.
Abstract:
Inside Smart Cities: Place, Politics and Urban Innovation
Abstract.
Karvonen A, Cugurullo F, Caprotti F (2018). Introduction. In (Ed) Inside Smart Cities, 1-12.
Karvonen A, Cugurullo F, Caprotti F (2018). Introduction: situating smart cities. In (Ed) Inside Smart Cities: Place, Politics and Urban Innovation, Londoin: Routledge, 1-12.
Cowley R, Caprotti F, Ferretti M, Zhong C (2018). Ordinary Chinese Smart Cities: the Case of Wuhan. In Karvonen A, Cugurullo F, Caprotti F (Eds.)
Inside Smart Cities: Place, Politics and Urban Innovation, London: Routledge, 45-64.
Abstract:
Ordinary Chinese Smart Cities: the Case of Wuhan
Abstract.
Cowley R, Caprotti F, Ferretti M, Zhong C (2018). Ordinary Chinese Smart Cities: the Case of Wuhan. In Karvonen A, Cugurullo F, Caprotti F (Eds.)
Inside Smart Cities: Place, Politics and Urban Innovation, London: Routledge, 45-64.
Abstract:
Ordinary Chinese Smart Cities: the Case of Wuhan
Abstract.
Cowley R, Caprotti F (2018). Smart city as anti-planning in the UK.
Environment and Planning D: Society and SpaceAbstract:
Smart city as anti-planning in the UK
Critical commentaries have often treated the smart city as a potentially problematic ‘top down’ tendency within policy-making and urban planning, which appears to serve the interests of already powerful corporate and political actors. This article, however, positions the smart city as signif- icant in its implicit rejection of the strong normativity of traditional technologies of planning, in favour of an ontology of efficiency and emergence. It explores a series of prominent UK smart city initiatives (in Bristol, Manchester and Milton Keynes) as bundles of experimental local prac- tices, drawing on the literature pointing to a growing valorisation of the ‘experimental’ over strong policy commitments in urban governance. It departs from this literature, however, by reading contemporary ‘smart experiments’ through Shapin and Schafer’s work on the emergence of 17th-century science, to advance a transhistorical understanding of experimentation as ori- ented towards societal reordering. From this perspective, the UK smart city merits attention primarily as an indicator of a wider set of shifts in approaches to governance. Its pragmatic orientation sits uneasily alongside ambitions to ‘standardise’ smart and sustainable urban devel- opment; and raises questions about the conscious overlap between the stated practical ambitions of smart city initiatives and pre-existing environmental and social policies.
Abstract.
Burton K, Karvonen A, Caprotti F (2018). Smart goes green: digitalising environmental agendas in Bristol and Manchester. In (Ed) Inside Smart Cities: Place, Politics and Urban Innovation, London: Routledge, 117-132.
Caprotti F (2018). Spaces of visibility in the smart city: flagship urban spaces and the smart urban imaginary.
Urban StudiesAbstract:
Spaces of visibility in the smart city: flagship urban spaces and the smart urban imaginary
Smart urbanism is a currently popular and widespread way of conceptualising the future city. At the same time, the smart city is critiqued by several scholars as difficult to define, and as being almost invisible to the naked eye. The paper explores two urban spaces through which the smart city is rendered visible, in two UK cities that are prominent sites for smart urban experimentation and development. Bristol’s Data Dome, and Glasgow’s
Operations Centre are analysed in light of their iconic nature. The paper develops a conceptual understanding of these flagship spaces of the actually existing smart cities through three interrelated conceptual lenses. Firstly, they are understood as a videological type of Leibniz’s concept of the windowless monad. Secondly, they are conceptualised as examples of banal and serialised architecture. Thirdly, these spaces and their attendant buildings are understood as totemic assemblages that point to newly emergent forms of elite urban power.
Abstract.
2017
Caprotti F (2017). Asmara: making (colonial) modernity work through transport networks and infrastructure. In Volgger P, Graf S (Eds.)
Architecture in Asmara : colonial origin and postcolonial experiences, Berlin: DOM Publishers.
Abstract:
Asmara: making (colonial) modernity work through transport networks and infrastructure
Abstract.
Caprotti F, Gong Z (2017). Challenging the eco-city. In (Ed) Sustainable Cities in Asia, 161-174.
Caprotti F, Gong Z (2017). Challenging the eco-city: residents’ perceptions of social sustainability in Tianjin Eco-City, China. In Caprotti F, Yu L (Eds.) Sustainable Cities in Asia, Routledge.
Caprotti F (2017). Emerging low-carbon urban mega-projects. In Dhakal S, Ruth M (Eds.)
Creating Low Carbon Cities, Springer, 51-62.
Abstract:
Emerging low-carbon urban mega-projects
Abstract.
de Boer H, Caprotti F (2017). Getting Londoners on two wheels: a comparative approach analysing London’s potential pathways to a cycling transition.
Sustainable Cities and SocietyAbstract:
Getting Londoners on two wheels: a comparative approach analysing London’s potential pathways to a cycling transition
This article compares the current state of cycling in London to the Amsterdam cycling transition of the 1970s, applying the Multi-Level Perspective to identify potential pathways and obstacles to the wider adoption of the cycling niche in London. Our approach is two-pronged, consisting of a historical perspective to analyse the cycling transition in Amsterdam, and a policy analysis in contemporary London, based on semi-structured interviews with respondents involved in London’s cycling policy. We identify factors that reinforce cycling’s niche status in London, thus making the wider adoption of cycling more challenging than it was in Amsterdam. Based on our comparison, we also highlight policy, infrastructure and cultural changes that will aid in promoting a cycling transition in London.
Abstract.
Caprotti F (2017). Protecting innovative niches in the green economy: investigating the rise and fall of Solyndra, 2005–2011.
GeoJournal,
82(5), 937-955.
Abstract:
Protecting innovative niches in the green economy: investigating the rise and fall of Solyndra, 2005–2011
This article examines the establishment and development of a protected ‘green’ niche around the solar manufacturing industry in the United States in the 2000s. The paper uses the case of Solyndra, an innovative solar manufacturing corporation founded in 2005 and that went bankrupt in 2011, as a window into identifying the key factors that led to the failure of Solyndra. Solyndra was, at the time, the largest recipient of loan funding from the US Department of Energy, making it into the main representative of a key strategic industry identified as a target for federal support as part of US stimulus funding after the 2008 financial crisis. The analysis of the Solyndra failure case presented here highlights the need for strategic transitional niches to be shielded longitudinally by a strategic, entrepreneurial state, and considered in light of transnational exogenous factors. The article also argues for the importance of analysing discursive strategies that perform strategic niches as belonging to specific societal pathways.
Abstract.
Caprotti F, Cowley R, Bailey I, Joss S, Sengers F, Raven R, Späth P, Jolivet E, Tan-Mullins M, Cheshmehzangi A, et al (2017).
Smart Eco-Cities in Europe and China: Opportunities, Drivers and Challenges. Exeter, University of Exeter. 0 pages.
Abstract:
Smart Eco-Cities in Europe and China: Opportunities, Drivers and Challenges
Abstract.
Caprotti F, Harmer N (2017). Spatialising urban sustainability transitions: eco-cities, multilevel perspectives and the political ecology of scale in the Bohai Rim, China. In Frantzeskaki N, Chasten Broto V, Coenen L, Loorbach D (Eds.) Urban Sustainability Transitions, London: Rutledge, 133-146.
Caprotti F, Li Yu S (2017). Sustainable Cities in Asia., Routledge.
Caprotti F (2017). The New Urban Agenda: key opportunities and challenges for policy and practice. Urban Research and Practice
2016
Caprotti F (2016). Defining a new sector in the green economy: Tracking the techno-cultural emergence of the cleantech sector, 1990-2010. Technology in Society, 46, 80-89.
Caprotti F, Cowley R (2016). Interrogating urban experiments.
Urban GeographyAbstract:
Interrogating urban experiments
The notion of the “urban experiment” has become increasingly prevalent and popular as a guiding concept and trope used by both scholars and policymakers, as well as by corporate actors with a stake in the future of the city. In this paper, we critically engage with this emerging focus on “urban experiments”, and with its articulation through the associated concepts of “living labs”, “future labs”, “urban labs” and the like. A critical engagement with the notion of urban experimentation is now not only useful, but a necessity: we introduce seven specific areas that need critical attention when considering urban experiments: these are focused on normativity, crisis discourses, the definition of “experimental subjects”, boundaries and boundedness, historical precedents, “dark” experiments and non-human experimental agency.
Abstract.
Caprotti F, Cowley RM, Flynn A, Joss S, Yu L (2016). Smart-Eco Cities in the UK: Trends and City Profiles 2016., University of Exeter (SMART-ECO Project).
Caprotti F (2016). The invisible war on nature: the Abyssinian war (1935–1936) in newsreels and documentaries in Fascist Italy.
Modern Italy,
19(3), 305-321.
Abstract:
The invisible war on nature: the Abyssinian war (1935–1936) in newsreels and documentaries in Fascist Italy
This contribution to the special issue focuses on newsreels and documentaries that were produced concerning the Second Italo–Ethiopian War (1935–1936), commonly known as the Abyssinian War. It aims to contextualise LUCE's filmic production on the war, so as to create a framework in which the institute can be understood not only as being part of a wider politics of propaganda in Fascist Italy, but as an example of a modern socio-technical organisation that enabled the discursive construction of East African nature as ‘Other’ and therefore helped to justify colonial war as a process of sanitised creative destruction aimed at replacing a previous, negative ‘first nature’ with a positive, Fascist and Italian ‘second nature’. The article draws on archival documents from Mussolini's government cabinet, and on LUCE documentaries and newsreels; these sources are used to create a background against which LUCE's concern with the Second Italo–Ethiopian War can be understood.
Abstract.
2015
Caprotti F, Springer C, Harmer N (2015). 'Eco' for Whom? Envisioning Eco-urbanism in the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city, China.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research,
39(3), 495-517.
Abstract:
'Eco' for Whom? Envisioning Eco-urbanism in the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city, China
Eco-cities have attracted international attention from governments, corporations, academics and other actors seeking to use sustainable urban planning to reduce urban environmental impacts. China has devoted significant political will and economic resources to the development of new-build eco-city projects, reflecting the Chinese government's goals to build a 'harmonious society' in which environmental sustainability and social stability are mutually reinforcing. We critically analyse the case of the Sino-Singapore Tianjin eco-city to demonstrate that the eco-city's ecologically modernizing visions of eco-urbanism construct a protective environment for its residents that constrains broader consideration of social sustainability. Through analysis of the marketing and presentation of specific domestic and other spaces of the eco-city, we examine the application of ecologically modernizing construction and technology to the design of the city. We argue that the eco-city is discursively constructed as ecologically beneficial for its inhabitants rather than for the broader socio-environmental landscape. Our analysis of residential spaces in Tianjin eco-city introduces the question of what 'eco' means when considering the construction of eco-urban environments for the city's residents.
Abstract.
Caprotti F (2015). Conclusion: Re-thinking the Eco-City?. In (Ed) Eco-Cities and the Transition to Low Carbon Economies, 88-107.
Caprotti F (2015). Eco-cities in the Age of Crisis. In (Ed) Eco-Cities and the Transition to Low Carbon Economies, 1-23.
Caprotti F (2015). Experimental Eco-Cities in China. In (Ed) Eco-Cities and the Transition to Low Carbon Economies, 24-62.
Caprotti F (2015). Golden sun, green economy: Market security and the US/EU-China ‘solar trade war’.
Asian Geographer,
32(2), 99-115.
Abstract:
Golden sun, green economy: Market security and the US/EU-China ‘solar trade war’
China’s solar manufacturing and R&D industry has developed rapidly since 2000: by 2010, 40% of the world’s solar panels were manufactured in China. This has occurred as a result of strategic government economic planning, which has included concerns about energy security, energy diversity, and about the stimulation of a renewables-based green economy. The growth of China’s solar industry has been marked since 2011 by what has come to be termed a “Solar Trade War” between the EU, the USA and China. The paper analyzes the heterogeneous framing of China’s solar energy industry by corporate, nongovernmental and government actors in the USA and European Union. In so doing, the paper aims to critically investigate the production of specific market knowledge(s) that are not only instrumental and rational, but based on often-contradictory discursive constructions of an apparently merely technological and economic phenomenon such as the production of solar modules.
Abstract.
Caprotti F (2015). Peak Oil and Eco-Urbanism in Abu Dhabi. In (Ed) Eco-Cities and the Transition to Low Carbon Economies, 63-87.
2014
Georgeson L, Caprotti F, Bailey I (2014). 'It's all a question of business': Investment identities, networks and decision-making in the cleantech economy.
Geografiska Annaler, Series B: Human Geography,
96(3), 217-229.
Abstract:
'It's all a question of business': Investment identities, networks and decision-making in the cleantech economy
Cleantech has emerged in the last decade as a major new investment sector at the forefront of the green economy. It responds to the need for innovative technologies to combat the impact of global environmental, climate and resource trends. Focusing on the cleantech sector, this article explores the central importance of relationality within the financial domain of the green economy. The central aim of this article is to deepen understandings of the operation of cleantech investment by examining the decision-making processes of cleantech actors, how these are influenced by (and influence) cleantech investment networks, and the relationships between these factors and the macro-level drivers and discourses focused on the cleantech sector. A relational economic geography approach is used in conjunction with other frameworks (spanning the cultural, structural and actor-network dimensions of cleantech investment) to investigate: how cleantech investors define the sector; the macro- and micro-level drivers of cleantech investment; and how cleantech networks form and operate to create and disseminate cleantech discourses and to generate the mutual trust and information sharing needed to secure cleantech investments. In so doing, the article seeks to shed greater light on the micro-level processes contributing to the creation and growth of cleantech investment markets as an essential catalyst and component of the green economy.
Abstract.
Caprotti F (2014). Critical research on eco-cities? a walk through the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City, China.
Cities,
36, 10-17.
Abstract:
Critical research on eco-cities? a walk through the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City, China
This article uses the narrative tool of a walk through Tianjin Eco-City, China, as an entry point in raising and discussing key questions in contemporary eco-city research. Eco-city projects are becoming increasingly prevalent in policy and political-economic discourses in a variety of locations as new urban spaces where blueprints for low carbon economies can be trialled. In light of this, the article highlights the key necessity of, firstly, considering scale when analyzing eco-city 'futures'. Secondly, the article argues for the need to interrogate eco-cities' definitions, as well as evaluation, performance and monitoring frameworks, as this will aid in critical analyses of the marketing, presentation and actually built urban environments in eco-city projects. Thirdly, the question of internal social resilience and the emergence of communities within newly-built eco-cities needs to be assessed: this is of crucial importance in light of the exclusive, gated nature of several flagship eco-city projects under construction at the time of writing. Lastly, the article argues that research on eco-city projects needs to consider not only the high-tech, new urban environments materialized as eco-cities, but also the production and reproduction of large, often transient populations of low-paid workers who build eco-cities and who form what the article calls the 'new urban poor', forming 'workers' cities' on the edges of flagship 'sustainable' urban projects worldwide. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.
Abstract.
Caprotti F (2014).
Eco-cities and the transition to low carbon economies.Abstract:
Eco-cities and the transition to low carbon economies
Abstract.
Caprotti F (2014). Eco-urbanism and the eco-city, or, denying the right to the city?.
Antipode,
46(5), 1285-1303.
Abstract:
Eco-urbanism and the eco-city, or, denying the right to the city?
This paper critically analyses the construction of eco-cities as technological fixes to concerns over climate change, Peak Oil, and other scenarios in the transition towards "green capitalism". It argues for a critical engagement with new-build eco-city projects, first by highlighting the inequalities which mean that eco-cities will not benefit those who will be most impacted by climate change: the citizens of the world's least wealthy states. Second, the paper investigates the foundation of eco-city projects on notions of crisis and scarcity. Third, there is a need to critically interrogate the mechanisms through which new eco-cities are built, including the land market, reclamation, dispossession and "green grabbing". Lastly, a sustained focus is needed on the multiplication of workers' geographies in and around these "emerald cities", especially the ordinary urban spaces and lives of the temporary settlements housing the millions of workers who move from one new project to another.
Abstract.
Caprotti F, Bailey I (2014). Making sense of the green economy.
Geografiska Annaler, Series B: Human Geography,
96(3), 195-200.
Abstract:
Making sense of the green economy
This special issue editorial explores potential research interfaces between human geography and the rapidly unfolding concept and practices of the "green economy". The article outlines a range of critical issues about the green economy that are particularly pertinent and suited to geographical analysis. The first concerns questions around the construction of the green economy concept and critical questioning of current, largely hegemonic neoliberal, growth-focused and technocentric definitions of the green economy. The second broaches the spatial complexities of green economic transitions, while the third discusses the need for critical appraisal of the logics and mechanisms of governance and transition that see the green economy as a key mechanism for economic, social and environmental change. The fourth focuses on the crucial issue of micro-level and individual practices and behaviour, and on links between individual behaviour and wider economic-environmental governance and economic systems. Finally, the article discusses the need for scholars to engage in imaginative consideration of alternatives to current, growth-focused paradigms and conceptualizations of the green economy.
Abstract.
Bailey I, Caprotti F (2014). The green economy: Functional domains and theoretical directions of enquiry.
Environment and Planning A,
46(8), 1797-1813.
Abstract:
The green economy: Functional domains and theoretical directions of enquiry
The green economy is a highly complex construct in terms of its attempts to integrate economic, environmental, and social concerns, the wide range of actors involved, its material outcomes, and the forms of governance needed to regulate processes of economic greening. As such, it poses new empirical and theoretical challenges for social science research on socioenvironmental futures. This paper has two main aims. The first is to survey the emergent features and functional domains of the green economy. The second is to consider theoretical tools that might be used to analyse the drivers and processes shaping the green economy. Focusing on literature on sociotechnical transitions, ecological modernisation, the 'green' cultural economy, and postpolitical governance, we argue that understanding the functional and spatial heterogeneity of the green economy necessitates a multitheoretical approach. We then explore how combining branches of research on socioenvironmental governance can lead to theoretically and ontologically richer insights into the drivers, practices, and power relations within the green economy. In so doing, we respond to calls for socioeconomic research on environmental change which is neither just empirical nor bound to one theoretical outlook to the detriment of understanding the complexity of socioenvironmental governance and human-nature relations. © 2014 Pion and its Licensors.
Abstract.
2013
Caprotti F, Romanowicz J (2013). Thermal eco-cities: Green building and urban thermal metabolism.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research,
37(6), 1949-1967.
Abstract:
Thermal eco-cities: Green building and urban thermal metabolism
Eco-city projects are becoming increasingly prevalent throughout the globe and are often marketed as 'new' urban environments focused on achieving sustainable urban living while promoting environmental-economic transitions towards a low-carbon technological and industrial base. The article argues for the need to consider the thermal aspects of urban metabolism, while at the same time focusing on the link between individual buildings and eco-city master plans and wider economic development strategies at a state level. In so doing, the article encourages critical analysis of eco-city design and planning, while keeping a focus on the role of specific building structures within eco-cities as examples of the intermeshing of what can be termed a 'political ecology of scale' which stretches from specific buildings' climatic characteristics, to the metabolic master plan for eco-cities, to provincial, regional and state-level plans for the integration of eco-cities within wider economic and political development trajectories. The article focuses on Masdar, in Abu Dhabi, an eco-city under construction at the time of writing. © 2013 Urban Research Publications Limited.
Abstract.
2012
Caprotti F (2012). Environment, Business and the Firm.
Geography Compass,
6(3), 163-174.
Abstract:
Environment, Business and the Firm
From wind turbines and renewable energy landscapes to environmental talks at the UN summits in Copenhagen (2009) and Cancún (2010), there is growing interest in the links between business and the environment. Much geographical work has critically focused on state-environment links, while economic geographers have attempted to theorize the emergence of markets and economies, in part through understanding the economy through a relational, cultural lens. However, while there has been significant work on critical approaches to the environment and capitalism, there has been a lack in explicit focus on the firm and its role, firstly, in mediating economic-environmental relations, and secondly in the production of specific environmental outcomes. Drawing on literatures on cultural political economy (CPE), Science and Technology Studies (STS), Actor Network Theory (ANT) and political ecology, the paper argues for a reincorporation of the firm into critical work on the environment in geography, and proposes three ways in which the firm can be usefully theorized in such work: as a relational economic and cultural actor, as a sociotechnical mediator, and as the producer of hybrid socionatures. © 2012 the Author. Geography Compass © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Abstract.
Gao E, Caprotti F (2012). Static imaginations and the possibilities of radical change: Reflecting on the Arab Spring. Area, 44(4), 510-512.
Caprotti F (2012). The cultural economy of cleantech: Environmental discourse and the emergence of a new technology sector.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
37(3), 370-385.
Abstract:
The cultural economy of cleantech: Environmental discourse and the emergence of a new technology sector
The paper analyses the discursive definition of the cleantech sector over the period 2000-10. It develops a dialogue between a cultural economy approach to sectoral development and recent research on the role of discourse in defining discursive arenas of environmental concern. The cleantech sector's rapid emergence in less than a decade can be seen as an example of the development of the cultural economy of an economic sector, defined in part through discursive logics and strategies performed by networks of actors constituted by firms, executives and policy professionals as well as non-governmental organisations and industry bodies. The paper conceptualises cleantech as a socio-technical sector that has developed through mechanisms that have established a dynamic sectoral identity as well as legitimacy around the way in which cleantech has been defined by networks of actors. The process of sectoral definition has, in turn, been based on the establishment of discursive logics that justify and make sense of the cleantech sector for investor firms and governments alike. Three discursive strands are thus identified and examined in the paper: the depiction of cleantech as the next paradigmatic technology revolution, the concept of cleantech as market-driven and the idea of cleantech as a 'technical fix' or solution to climate crisis. © 2011 Royal Geographical Society.
Abstract.
2011
Caprotti F (2011). Air Empire: British imperial civil aviation 1919-39.
AFRICAN AFFAIRS,
110(438), 147-149.
Author URL.
Gray M, Caprotti F (2011). Cleantech clusters and the promotion of the low carbon transition: Criteria for success and evidence from Copenhagen, Masdar and online platforms.
Carbon Management,
2(5), 529-538.
Abstract:
Cleantech clusters and the promotion of the low carbon transition: Criteria for success and evidence from Copenhagen, Masdar and online platforms
Anthropogenic climate change and energy security are considerable societal and economic problems. The scalable expansion of clean technologies (cleantech) is urgently required to mitigate these problems. With international negotiations to control climate change looking more polemical than ever and economic austerity threatening to demote the low carbon transition, cluster development is a cost-effective option that could promote cleantech, independent of these potentially destabilizing variables. This paper contextualizes innovation and cluster theory within the cleantech sphere and compares Silicon Valley and Regional Development Agencies to highlight how clusters and economic transitions can evolve under different political and societal circumstances. It also analyses the Copenhagen Climate Cluster, the Masdar Initiative and online clusters to determine external and internal factors that could contribute to their success or failure, and outlines criteria, or prerequisites and successful strategies, for the formation of effective cleantech clusters. © 2011 Future Science Ltd.
Abstract.
Caprotti F (2011). Overcoming distance and space through technology: Record aviation linking fascist Italy with South America.
Space and Culture,
14(3), 330-348.
Abstract:
Overcoming distance and space through technology: Record aviation linking fascist Italy with South America
This article analyzes modern, discursive attempts to overcome distance and space through analyses of discourses focused on record aviation attempts in 1930s' fascist Italy. Two particular flights are analyzed, both linking Italy with South America. The first analyzed flight is a 1937 seaplane distance record attempt; the second was a 1939 endeavor to establish regular, scheduled airmail services between Italy and Brazil. The flights are analyzed using institutional importance criteria, based on the preservation of archival documents concerning the record attempts by the Ministry of Aeronautics. The argument presented here is that the examined flights were of importance to the regime for immediate propaganda purposes, as well as for the use of aviation as a metaphor for Italian fascism. In particular, the article uses a framework that frames Italian fascism as a modern phenomenon, rooted in the ideological and political utility of the separation between natural and social spheres. Aviation, when identified with fascism, became a technosocial discursive realm juxtaposed to the natural limits and boundaries to be overcome through aeronautical technology. The article resultantly analyzes the discursive construction and representation of aviation, and nature, in the case of the two record flights. © SAGE Publications 2011.
Abstract.
Caprotti F (2011). Profitability, practicality and ideology: Fascist civil aviation and the short life of Ala Littoria, 1934-1943. Journal of Transport History, 32(1), 17-38.
Caprotti F (2011). Visuality, hybridity, and colonialism: Imagining ethiopia through colonial aviation, 1935-1940.
Annals of the Association of American Geographers,
101(2), 380-403.
Abstract:
Visuality, hybridity, and colonialism: Imagining ethiopia through colonial aviation, 1935-1940
This article examines the discursive construction of visual imaginations of Italian East Africa through visual and textual materials associated with fascist colonial civil aviation from 1934 through 1940. Analysis of materials produced by Ala Littoria, the fascist regime's main airline, reveals discursive strands and themes that contributed to the deeply modern depiction of Ethiopia, Italian Somaliland, and Eritrea (the constituent colonies within Italian East Africa) as "natural" landscapes that could be accessed, consumed, and dominated through the air, and in particular through aviation technology and the institution of a colonial civil aviation network in East Africa. Aviation was as a hybrid technology that contributed to the discursive, and therefore material, imaginative construction of Italian East Africa through aviation's material and technological basis as well as its visual representation. © 2011 by Association of American Geographers.
Abstract.
2010
Coopey R, Caprotti F, Zimmerbauer K, Kallio KP, Hurwitz Z (2010). Book Reviews. Space and Polity, 14(2), 207-217.
Caprotti F (2010). From finance to green technology activist states, geopolitical finance and hybrid neoliberalism. In (Ed)
After the Crisis: Rethinking Finance, 81-100.
Abstract:
From finance to green technology activist states, geopolitical finance and hybrid neoliberalism
Abstract.
2009
Caprotti F (2009). Financial crisis, activist states and (missed) opportunities.
Critical Perspectives on International Business,
5(1-2), 78-84.
Abstract:
Financial crisis, activist states and (missed) opportunities
Purpose: This article seeks to discuss three key issues raised by the recent financial crisis: the rise of activist states; a new focus on the geopolitical effects of finance; and possible future social implications of the rapid response to crisis. Design/methodology/approach: the paper provides an analytical overview of three of the implications of the current crisis, and introduces the idea of the activist state in financial markets. Findings: the article focuses on three issues raised in connection with the recent crisis: the rapid rise of activist states as a result of impaired liquidity; the bringing to light of long-neglected geopolitical spaces of finance; and the opportunities for improved social aims communication and lobbying which result from future analyses of responses to the crisis. Originality/value: the article's focus is on the interface between finance and politics. The article introduces the idea of a financial activist state as a public entity which behaves like an activist shareholder in the market. The article also suggests that the political and banking reaction to the current crisis can be seen in terms of opportunities to improve communication of social, political and policy aims in the future. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Abstract.
Caprotti F (2009). Reproductive disruptions: gender, technology, and biopolitics in the new millennium.
GENDER PLACE AND CULTURE,
16(1), 117-119.
Author URL.
Caprotti F (2009). Scipio Africanus: Film, internal colonization and empire.
Cultural Geographies,
16(3), 381-401.
Abstract:
Scipio Africanus: Film, internal colonization and empire
This paper analyses the film Scipione l'Africano (Scipio the African) (Gallone, 1937), relating it to the fascist landreclamation and internal colonization project in the Pontine Marshes as well as Italy's imperial ambitions in Africa. The film, dealing with the defeat of Hannibal by Roman military leader Scipio, posits clear parallels between the Roman empire and the fascist regime, and between Scipio and Mussolini. The paper argues that the filming of Scipio the African on the 'conquered' landscape of the Pontine Marshes was a metaphorical allusion to the supposedly successful Italian colonial project in Africa in the 1930s. The landscape of the Pontine Marshes isexamined first of all, followed by analysis of the filming of Scipio the African in the marshes through newsreels from the era. The paper then examines the film's content, focusing on representational parallels between a glorious Roman past and a projected victorious fascist future, mediated through the success of the fascist internal colonization initiative in the Pontine Marshes. © 2009 SAGE Publications.
Abstract.
2008
Caprotti F (2008). Internal colonisation, hegemony and coercion: Investigating migration to Southern Lazio, Italy, in the 1930s.
Geoforum,
39(2), 942-957.
Abstract:
Internal colonisation, hegemony and coercion: Investigating migration to Southern Lazio, Italy, in the 1930s
This paper investigates the Italian fascist regime's use of internal colonisation as part of a wider ruralisation policy aimed at promoting population growth, curbing rural-urban migration, staunching emigration, and halting the spread of industrial urbanisation. By focusing on the case study of the Pontine Marshes, the paper demonstrates how, through targeted selection procedures aimed at displacing defined social and political undesirables, migrants were chosen and effectively coerced into migrating to the "fascist" landscape of the marshes. The area, reclaimed and developed in the 1930s, was celebrated as a sign of the regime's engineering and social success. The paper utilises Antonio Gramsci's thought on hegemony, and argues that the overt use of coercion hints at the fact that fascism, although ideologically totalitarian and hegemonic, was contested. Although statisticians, demographers and state bureaucrats were organised and institutionalised in the construction of hegemony based on consent, fascism based itself more in coercion than in passive consent in the case of internal colonisation. © 2007.
Abstract.
Caprotti F, Kaïka M (2008). Producing the ideal fascist landscape: Nature, materiality and the cinematic representation of land reclamation in the Pontine Marshes.
Social and Cultural Geography,
9(6), 613-634.
Abstract:
Producing the ideal fascist landscape: Nature, materiality and the cinematic representation of land reclamation in the Pontine Marshes
Using previously unpublished material from the L'Unione Cinematografica Educativa (LUCE) archive and the Central State Archive in Rome, this article examines how film-making became part and parcel of the process of 'taming' nature in the Pontine Marshes under Mussolini's regime. Fascist authorities perceived the undisciplined and unproductive nature of the 'death-inducing' swamps as something that had to be extinguished from the face of Italy, to make way for an ideal fascist nature that would nurture ideal fascist subjects. We argue that the success of transforming the swamps owed as much to the extensive investment of labour power, capital, and technology, as it did to the careful staging of every step of the project through cinematographic representations. Although planning and land reclamation institutions were responsible for the material production of the reclaimed land, the LUCE institute was instrumental in actively turning this new land into the ideal fascist landscape. In so doing, the paper offers a new reading on landscape and nationalism explored through an analysis of the production of landscape in Italy under Mussolini.
Abstract.
Caprotti F (2008). Technology and geographical imaginations: Representing aviation in 1930s Italy.
Journal of Cultural Geography,
25(2), 181-205.
Abstract:
Technology and geographical imaginations: Representing aviation in 1930s Italy
This paper examines the geographical imaginations associated with aviation in fascist Italy, focusing on the representation of flight on the one hand, and on the other hand the role of propaganda flights organized by the regime in the 1930s. The representation and use of aviation in interwar Italy is explored in light of the concept of technological legitimation, based on an understanding of technological practice as a political and ideological instrument. Aviation, as one of the new subjects of artistic representations of the modern era, was grasped by avant-garde and modern movements in the early twentieth century. In turn, representations of aviation were used by Mussolini's regime, which considered it a key to national development and modernization, materially as well as in the representational sphere. Propaganda flights in 1930s Italy were organized by the Ministry of Aeronautics and local aero clubs, and were an expression of the politicized use of aviation, both in terms of representations of technology and the aviator, and the exploitation of flight's public potential for the construction of fascist spectacle.
Abstract.
2007
McCormick PJ, Whalen K, Caprotti F, Gillespie CA, Smith BE, Sultana S, Knight DB, Olsen DH (2007). Book Reviews. Journal of Cultural Geography, 24(1), 113-135.
Caprotti F (2007). Destructive creation: fascist urban planning, architecture and New Towns in the Pontine Marshes.
Journal of Historical Geography,
33(3), 651-679.
Abstract:
Destructive creation: fascist urban planning, architecture and New Towns in the Pontine Marshes
This paper examines the construction, architecture, planning and design of New Towns in the Pontine Marshes, south of Rome, in the 1930s, analysing the discourses which contributed to their shaping and settlement. It focuses specifically on the plans and architectural characteristics of the city of Sabaudia as the best example of fascist urban utopias in the area. The paper also moves beyond an analysis of architecture and planning to consider the human beings who were slated for occupying what were viewed as ideal, utopian fascist spaces. This is done through an investigation of Italy's ruralization and internal colonization policies, which aimed to tackle a 'demographic problem' defined through recourse to statistics and sociological analysis. These policies were animated by colonists, and their families, chosen by the regime's institutions to take part in the Pontine Marshes project. Italian fascism's structuring of a new urban environment, which stretched from grand systemic designs to the measurement of mosquito net dimensions in colonial houses' bedrooms, justified the attempted social and political control of fascism's experimental urban subjects. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract.
Caprotti F (2007). Mussolini's Cities. Youngstown, NJ, Cambria Press.
2006
Caprotti F (2006). Malaria and technological networks: Medical geography in the Pontine Marshes, Italy, in the 1930s.
Geographical Journal,
172(2), 145-155.
Abstract:
Malaria and technological networks: Medical geography in the Pontine Marshes, Italy, in the 1930s
This paper examines the struggle against malaria undertaken by the fascist regime in the Pontine Marshes, south of Rome, and relates it to discourses of domination of nature on the one hand, and modernization and civilization through technological networks such as health and medical networks on the other. The marshes' 'first nature' is described first of all, focusing on malaria and the difficulty of making an impact on marsh biology before the fascist enterprise and before the large-scale employment of modern technology for the subjugation, channelling and development of the marshes. Secondly, the paper focuses on the organization of medical anti-malaria networks in the marshes during the years immediately preceding and during the fascist period (1922-43). Thirdly, the 'second nature' produced in the marshes following the land reclamation and anti-malaria projects is examined, and an assessment is provided of the fascist anti-malaria project in the marshes. © 2006 the Author. Journal compilation © 2006 the Royal Geographical Society.
Abstract.
2005
Caprotti F (2005). Fetishising violence, marginalising the human dimension. Antipode, 37(4), 633-637.
Caprotti F (2005). Information Management and Fascist Identity: newsreels in fascist Italy. Media History, 11(3), 177-191.
