Safe Cities in Pakistan: Knowledge Infrastructures, Urban Planning, and the Security State

Throughout the world, cities are partnering with multinational corporations to launch safe city solutions, technical-bureaucratic assemblages which use integrated information and communication technologies (ICTs) to enhance urban safety and security. In metropolitan Pakistan, safe city projects are framed as responses of the security state-a common lens through which the country is regularly understood. The article, however, situates safe city projects and the concept of security, more generally, within the history of infrastructure development and urban planning in Pakistan. It shows that safe city projects shape the relations between the state, people, urban environments, and material things in three key ways. First, the collection and production of vast quantities of data through which ICTs make people not only the objects of-but also the input for-safe city solutions. Second, safe city projects idealise state modernity, professionalism, and efficiency. Finally, safe city projects are connected to complex financial and legal regimes, which position security in relation to proprietary technologies.

Automated summary

This article examines safe city projects in Pakistan and situates them within the context of infrastructure development and urban planning history. It highlights the ways in which these projects shape the relationships between the state, people, urban environments, and material things through data collection and production, idealization of state modernity, and connection to proprietary technologies.