Labelling an urban area as a ‘smart city’ suggests efficiency, resilience, and alignment with the future. Cities strive to avoid being seen as not smart, leading local governments to adopt technologies, rankings, and partnerships that may not reflect residents’ priorities. Our research, focusing on the smart city agenda in Latin America, reveals that companies entice municipalities into adopting ‘smart’ initiatives through unregulated lobbying. Terms such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and big data often mask corporate interests, resulting in the privatisation of urban digital infrastructures. This shift leads to proprietary, non-interoperable solutions or one-size-fits-all technosolutionist products, ignoring the unique needs of each city. Our reflections are based on fieldwork in São Paulo, Curitiba, and Rio de Janeiro, participant observation at smart city expos in São Paulo and Curitiba, and policy and legal analysis of master plans, legislation, reports, white papers, policies, investment plans, press releases, procurement processes, and contracts, as well as interviews with policymakers, civil servants, company representatives, and specialists, and Freedom of Information Act-equivalent requests.
