PhD Dissertation: Rethinking Smart Urbanism: City-Making and the Spread of Digital Infrastructures in Nairobi

The main goal of this dissertation is therefore to empirically explore and understand the multiple ways in which cities and infrastructures are constructed and reconstructed through ICT innovation and appropriation, and to explain existing infrastructure constellations through countervailing processes and rationalities in the context of splintered urbanism. Drawing on the case of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, the dissertation examines the relationship between urban plans and digital infrastructure development, the place-based sociospatial contexts that shape digital infrastructures, and the extent to which these infra-structures facilitate utility companies’ ambitions of extending centralized networks to new territories.