Terrains of care in the smart city: sensemaking by creative communities of practice

Abstract Critical smart city research has presented wide-ranging risks of technocentric urban development. One critique lies in the kinds of citizenship directed under smart urban paradigms, which do little to account for residents’ practices of care. This paper is an ethico-onto-epistemological re-examination of smart cities through the lens of care practices specifically focusing on creative communities of practice. We use an enactivist empirical approach to help uncover experiences of sensemaking in the smart city held by three creative communities of practice in Helsinki. Through in-depth interviews with n = 22 urban planners, artists, and community space organizers, we assessed these groups’ differing and overlapping sensemaking processes. Utilizing 5E sensemaking processes (embodied, extended, enacted, emotive, and embedded) as a flexible analytical framework, we identify and interpret their practices of care as ways of sensemaking in a developing smart urban environment. Our results depict terrains of care in which participation and citizenship in the smart city is not neutral, but embedded in affective engagement, navigating rules and institutions, and cultivation of joy and inspiration. We use our findings to discuss what these interweaving terrains of care mean for citizenship and transformational change in the smart city.