| Abstract [eng] |
Smart city technologies based on sensors, data analysis and algorithmic governance are already being applied in Vilnius city management, public safety and infrastructure planning. The reviewed scholarly literature revealed that cultural criminology offers a framework for analysing social control in which urban order is shaped through symbolic, aesthetic and affective practices. It examines how the smart city functions as a sociotechnical imaginary, constructing a normative vision of the future shaped by technologies, institutional and corporate interests. Algorithmic governance and surveillance are discussed as new forms of control operating through data collection, profiling and automated decision making. However, a lack of Lithuanian empirical research on the relationship between smart city technologies and social control is identified. A qualitative document analysis and a qualitative institutional actor map were carried out in order to investigate how Vilnius city institutions shape social control practices through the deployment and communication of technologies. A corpus of 19 institutional documents and 7 communication texts was analysed, encompassing strategic plans (e.g. the Strategic Development Plan until 2030, strategic action plans), institutional communication (vilnius.lt announcements) and legal acts (data protection documents, municipal decisions on technology deployment). Coding was performed in MAXQDA, producing a system of 27 codes. The actor map covered 23 institutional actors and 36 inter-institutional connections, visualised on the Kumu.io platform. The research results showed that institutional documents construct a Vilnius smart city vision grounded in four tropes: the fetishisation of computing technologies, where any issue becomes a technological question; the overstatement of the city as a unit of solution, where Vilnius is positioned as a place to address international challenges; the inability to see the real causes of problems, where social issues are resolved through technologies; and the trope of technological identity, where the "ID Vilnius" brand merges with the city's identity. The institutional actor map showed that the Vilnius smart city vision is shaped by two principal actors: the municipal administration and UAB "ID Vilnius". |
