What Los Angeles tells us about Dracula Urbanism

In their piece Toward a Dracula Urbanism: Smart City Building in Flint and Jakarta, Wilson and Wyly (2022) inaugurate Dracula urbanism as an explanatory framework for identifying previously unnoticed dynamics in advanced capitalist cities, particularly those engaging in smart city initiatives. From the perspective of LA, a radically different context from Wilson and Wyly's (2022) choices of Flint and Jakarta, I argue that the logic of Dracula urbanism can be extended beyond the imbrication of real estate states and smart cities to shed new light on other forms of urban redevelopment and their consequences such as gentrification and urban exclusion more broadly. Additionally, I emphasize the importance of the local in the multi-scalar Dracula urbanist imagination, and make an argument against the so-called centerless and unbounded character of smart cities, which I show are mired in forms of inter-urban competition and discourses shaped by ever-present, politico-legally defined borders.

Automated summary

In this article, the authors introduce "Dracula urbanism" as a framework for understanding hidden dynamics in advanced capitalist cities engaged in smart city initiatives. The author argues that the concept of Dracula urbanism can be applied to urban redevelopment beyond real estate and smart cities, shedding light on issues such as gentrification and urban exclusion. The article emphasizes the importance of the local context in the multi-scalar imagination of Dracula urbanism and criticizes the notion of centerless and unbounded smart cities, revealing inter-urban competition and border-defined discourses.