Smartwashing mobility: Governing smart mobility through urban imaginaries

Visions of the smart city have become increasingly influential in guiding contemporary urban governance, particularly within the domain of mobility, where digital technologies and data-driven systems are expected to enable more sustainable and efficient transport systems. While existing research has highlighted the role of sociotechnical imaginaries in shaping smart city agendas, less attention has been given to how such visions are enacted and made consequential within everyday governance practices. This paper addresses this gap by examining how smart mobility initiatives derive value through their association with dominant imaginaries of smart urban futures. Empirically, the paper analyses four initiatives in Stavanger (Norway) and Gothenburg (Sweden). Drawing on literature on sociotechnical imaginaries and smart urbanism, we conceptualise smartwashing as the process through which initiatives selectively mobilise dominant visions of smartness to enhance legitimacy and political viability. Adopting a project-level perspective, we find that smart mobility projects derive value through interrelated processes of articulating projects through narratives of smartness, mobilising these narratives to advance projects within their political contexts, and aligning projects with existing policy goals and local governance settings, generating legitimacy and support even where their impacts remain partial or uncertain. We thus contend that, rather than deliberate misrepresentation, smartwashing captures the performative use of smartness as a governing frame through which projects are framed and promoted as meaningful and actionable, thereby embedding them within contemporary urban governance.