As cities become more digitally governed, centralized infrastructures face growing risks across identity, safety, and data domains. This chapter reframes blockchain as a foundational trust protocol for urban resilience, emphasizing its core features: immutability, decentralization, transparency, and consensus, as tools to address systemic privacy and security challenges. It explores blockchain's role in securing digital identities, logging infrastructure events, and enabling auditable governance. Real-world deployments in land registries, voting, procurement, and incident response, especially in Asia and Europe are analyzed. Privacy-preserving techniques like zero-knowledge proofs and decentralized identity are also examined. The chapter highlights integration hurdles such as interoperability, regulatory gaps, and ethical tensions, while outlining emerging trends like Blockchain 4.0, quantum-safe cryptography, and DAO-led civic participation. It offers a roadmap for decentralized citizen-centric governance in smart cities.
As information and services are becoming more and more decentralized and they are often available in the cloud, an increasing number of older adults are expected to use Internet-based services âhealth, education, finance and others. For this reason, it seems important to plan models and/or strategies to allow the older adult population to acquire and enhance digital competencies more easily. The goal of this research is to show a blended workshop based on a Learning Management System (LMS) as a supporting tool for older adultsâ digital literacy. This blended workshop was based on the adoption of an instructional model and on prior experiences of the groups of elderly that participated in the face-to-face workshops. This study involved 98 adults aged 60 and above, 72 Females (68.5 ± 6.9) and 26 Males (73.3 ± 7.4). 61 older adults participated in the face-to-face workshop (FFG) on digital literacy and 37 participated in the blended workshop (BLG). Digital literacy increased at the post-evaluation after the workshops but even more for the BLG. Likewise, in the validation of the blended workshop the results were positive regarding ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude toward using and intention to use, which showed that older adults believe that it is useful to implement this type of supporting systems for developing their digital competencies. Hence, it is possible to conclude that older adults are capable of learning and acquiring digital literacy skills as long as they are strongly motivated or they know the functional benefits related to ICT.
Open access
Technology Use by Older Adults
Assistive Technology in Communication and Mobility
The data science technologies of artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), big data and behavioral/predictive analytics, and blockchain are poised to revolutionize government and create a new generation of GovTech start-ups. The impact from the âsmartificationâ of public services and the national infrastructure will be much more significant in comparison to any other sector given governmentâs function and importance to every institution and individual. Potential GovTech systems include Chatbots and intelligent assistants for public engagement, Robo-advisors to support civil servants, real-time management of the national infrastructure using IoT and blockchain, automated compliance/regulation, public records securely stored in blockchain distributed ledgers, online judicial and dispute resolution systems, and laws/statutes encoded as blockchain smart contracts. Government is potentially the major âclientâ and also âpublic championâ for these new data technologies. This review paper uses our simple taxonomy of government services to provide an overview of data science automation being deployed by governments world-wide. The goal of this review paper is to encourage the Computer Science community to engage with government to develop these new systems to transform public services and support the work of civil servants.
Alexandre Carvalho Barbosa, Thays A. Oliveira, Vitor N. Coelho
The smart city debate will still be the scope of business, policy-making and territorial planning in the following years. Based on that, the paper aims to propose an interdisciplinary conceptualization of smart territories. The goal is to promote the contrary movement of megacities creation and also consolidate the geographical aspect of smartness. The concept was formulated based on the elements of sustainable territorial development, strategic spatial planning and smart governance. In addition, taking hand of a parallel literature review, the study explores the potential of creating complementary cryptocurrencies as a strategy of territorial planning. This term was built based on already existing complementary currency systems in distributed ledger technologies scope. The idea provided presents a great potential for poverty alleviation by bringing together financial and digital inclusion.
This poster describes an ongoing research project that builds an IoT data management experimental environment based on Ethereum Blockchain and smart contracts. The goal of the project is to simulate the application of IoT devices in smart city initiatives, and explore how IoT data management could benefit from Blockchain technology. In this project, there are three basic questions we are attempting to answer. 1) How do you link various kinds of IoT devices to the Blockchain, as they have different computing capabilities? 2) How do you store data on Blockchain from different IoT devices, and retrieve data for further utilization? 3) To what extent, smart contracts can be designed to implement automated data access management?
The increasing trend of people moving to urban areas and the associated urbanization process require facing challenges regarding city infrastructures capability to cover citizens needs for energy, water, transportation, healthcare. education, safety. The smart urban technologies represent an important contribution to the sustainable development of cities, making smart cities a reality. The concept of Home Automation must be considered in relation to the new technologies and the new smart users and the house will no longer be regarded as a single entity, but as a fundamental part of the new concept of city. The idea of smart cities is developing extremely rapidly, integrating smart grid, services, building, house and appliances, these subsystems must be able to interact, connect, and control remotely, collaboratively, to achieve a better quality of life, sustainability, energy saving, social and economic development. The widespread of Smart City depends heavily on the capability of users to understand and handle the ICT, IoT and BC. The paper designs a smart district model that is the step necessary to build a Smart City using new technologies and the role of an efficient energy management system integrated into a platform based on an IoT and BC approach for a replicable model and can be implemented.
Nowadays, in this digital world, one of the biggest concerns for business and many other public entities, is to know precisely the âidentityâ of the users that are behind of their systems. Since the data can define a person, there have been many tries to develop technology to determine accurately who the users are and certify their basics attributes like name, address, credit record, as well as other personal characteristics like health status, hobbies and others. That is why Digital Identity has taken a significantly important role in this area and becoming as a crucial security measure in this interconnected environment. This research is a systematic mapping review with the goal of collecting all relevant existing research of Digital Identity on Blockchain technology implemented in a smart city environment. The objective of this paper is to understand the current research topics, challenges and future directions of these areas from the technical point of view. It is expected that this paper can stimulate interest in theory and practice to further discussions and research in these areas.
The notion of smart city has grown popular over the past few years. It embraces several dimensions depending on the meaning of the word âsmartâ and benefits from innovative applications of new kinds of information and communications technology to support communal sharing. By relying on prior literature, this paper proposes a conceptual framework with three dimensions: (1) human, (2) technology, and (3) organization, and explores a set of fundamental factors that make a city smart from a sharing economy perspective. Using this triangle framework, we discuss what emerging blockchain technology may contribute to these factors and how its elements can help smart cities develop sharing services. This study discusses how blockchain-based sharing services can contribute to smart cities based on a conceptual framework. We hope it can stimulate interest in theory and practice to foster discussions in this area.
This case study is one of ten international case studies developed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), in association with the Korean Research Institute for Human Settlements (KRIHS), for the cities of Anyang, Medellin, Namyangju, Orlando, Pangyo, Rio de Janeiro, Santander, Singapore, Songdo, and Tel Aviv. At the IDB, the Competitiveness and Innovation Division (CTI), the Fiscal and Municipal Management Division (FMM), and the Emerging and Sustainable Cities Initiative (ESCI) coordinated the study. This project was part of technical cooperation ME-T1254, financed by the Knowledge Partnership Korean Fund for Technology and Innovation of the Republic of Korea. At KRIHS, the National Infrastructure Research Division coordinated the project and the Global Development Partnership Center (GDPC) provided the funding. In recent years, Tel Aviv has developed a unique bottom-up approach toward its Smart City project, focusing its efforts on direct resident-oriented services rather than expensive, large-scale infrastructure. This case study explains Tel Aviv's strategy, demonstrating how a high level of smart urban services was achieved using decentralized, low-cost methods. The report provides details on the approach, such as its reliance on the local startup ecosystem, its creation of services using open municipal databanks and public-private partnerships, and its emphasis on lightweight services that interact directly with residents. The case study analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of Tel Aviv's approach, discussing the technologies, processes, and strategies that can be used to implement a cost-effective smart city initiative.
How should we think about âsmart citiesâ? This issue brings together a set of articles that examine current debates around the goals, ethics, potential and limitations of a concept that has become a metaphor for urban modernity. We also include an unusual addition, a short intervention that surfaces some of the controversial issues related to smart cities, as a conception and as a practical undertaking. Some of the seeds of todayâs smart cities can be found in a series of conversations among scholars and practitioners in the 1980s, reflecting on the future of cities. In a book review, Phil Harris, describes a particularly significant intervention by Sheridan Tatsuno of NeoConcepts, a consultant connected to the Institute for Constructive Capitalism at the University of Texas at Austin, a think tank founded in the 1980s by George Kosmetsky, an entrepreneur turned academic. Like others at the conference, Tatsuno was writing at a time when Silicon Valley was the place to emulate and ventures such as the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina served as alternative examples of successful future industrialisation. He, like many others, was propagating the idea that any and every place could be Silicon Valley-like, if they simply followed a prescription: As Harris (1992) describes: Tatsuno calls out âthe age of technopolis and the metamorphosis of traditional cities and even high-tech parks. One alternative is the global network city of dispersed, highly interactive economic nodes linked by massive networks of airports, highways, and communications. Another metaphor is the âintelligent cityâ featuring advanced information/communication technologies, complexes wired for satellite and fiber optics. These network cities are inhabited by âknowledge processorsâ engaged in rapid information exchanges (Harris, 1992). As Rob Kitchin lays out in his article in this issue, however, the origins of the smart city are not found solely in the search for technological utopias (Kitchin, 2015). They also originate in the 1980s prescriptions for managed, entrepreneurial citiesâwhose speed and flexibility in adapting to global markets make them more efficient and competitive (Logan and Molotch, 1987). Kitchin also raises the provocative question of whether another model of âsmartnessâ, the digital or wired city, belongs in the âsmart cityâ genre. The wired city in fact offered a somewhat different vision, that of inclusiveness in access to digital technologies. These two competing visions of cities transformed by technologies have not been reconciled despite the recognition that the Internet and particularly, the Internet of things, is a central feature of smart city models. Although the âsmart cityâ concept has emerged from long-persisting ideas about urban technological utopias and the perfectly competitive city, it also differs from these urban visions in some important ways. What is new about the contemporary smart city narrative is the emphasis on places transformed by the application of technologies rather than, as in the case of Silicon Valley, places where sectors such as microelectronics and computers drive the urban economy. Smart cities are not just where new technologies might be born. They are the receptacles for technology, the target of its applications. Although saturated as consumer markets, cities present opportunities for firms seeking markets for modern sensing, forecasting and management technologies. Although 1990s city policymakers sought to replicate the job base and innovative milieu of high-tech centres, the contemporary purveyors of smart city technologies see city governments as markets for the products of the last 40 years of technology development. At the same time, ambitious politicians and civil servants are ever on the search for the next âbig ideaâ to move their city to the top of the rank of attractive places. The race to get on the bandwagon and become a smart city has encouraged city policymakers to endogenise the process of technology-led growth, directing municipal budgets toward investments that bestow smart city status. The public investments that confer smart city status are impressive. A recent report from a large Australian development company puts a dollar figure on the expected growth of smart cities. According to Ivan Fernandez, Industry Director for Frost & Sullivan, Australia and New Zealand, a consulting firm promoting growth through globalisation, The global smart city market will be valued at US$1.565 trillion in 2020. Over 26 Global Cities are expected to be Smart Cities in 2025, with more than 50% of these smart cities from Europe and North America. By 2025, it is expected that around 58% of the worldâs population or 4.6 billion people will live in urban areas. In developed regions and cities, the urban population in cities could account for up to 81% of total population. This will pose serious challenges for city planners, who will have to re-think how they provide basic city services to residents in a sustainable manner. Governments of smart cities are transforming from a traditional model of a silo-based organization to a more collaborative, integrated service delivery model. Cities will collaborate with each other to drive smart city innovation by entering into partnerships with each other. Technology and ecosystem convergence, collaboration and partnerships between stakeholders from different industries, such as energy and infrastructure, IT, telecoms and government will also expedite the delivery of integrated services http://www.newswiretoday.com/news/148711/Global-Smart-Cities-Market-to-Reach-US1.56-Trillion-by-2020-Finds-Frost-and-Sullivan/ Smart city advocates include not only large information economy businesses, such as IBM, Intel, Siemens, CISCO and SAP, but also academic and philanthropic organisations. Each has a distinctive sense of what smart cities can accomplish. Academics are attracted to technology applications that offer the ability to âsenseâ and track human use of urban infrastructure. They are drawn by the potential that these applications offer to remediate urban problems such as snarled traffic, the lack of parking spaces, and inefficient energy use and waste disposal. Philanthropists see solutions to urban ills with an eye toward greater equity, improved quality of life and citizen empowerment. The large information firms see the vastly expanding market for management applications in an urbanising world as an opportunity to develop stable revenue streams in the form of continuous contracts. These firms are, however, selling different visions of âsmartâ and products to achieve the vision. Competing and sometimes contradictory stakeholder goals contribute to the inevitable conclusion that the smart city is a chaotic concept. What the smart cities movement has done, albeit perhaps inadvertently, is to reignite interest in cities as engines of growth. This has been perhaps most evident with the model cities created on greenfield sites. A few have gone beyond drawing boards and taken shape on the ground. Each of these cities is unique and hence an unlikely candidate for reproducibility as âtheâ smart city model. The distinctiveness characteristic of Song Do in South Korean or Plan IT in Portugal belies one of the most common complaints about smart city applications, that they espouse only a single development model. What they do have in common, however, beyond encompassing expansive views of âsmart cityâ development, is acceptance of urban competitiveness and the primacy of economic goals as intrinsic to the smart city concept. Looking closely, there are a dizzying array of attempts at smart city formation and membership. As Hollandsâs contribution to this special issue highlights, there are all manner and scale of potential candidates. He highlights eight well-known examples. Singaporeâs iN2015 (intelligent nation) project, Songdo, South Koreaâs purpose built, globally competitive, high-tech, environmentally sustainable, business city, or Guangzhou Knowledge City in China are designed to attract talent, skilled manpower and knowledge-based industries. Masdar City, in the UAE, is currently being designed as an âoasis of the futureâ (quite literally as it is built in the desert) and intended to become the worldâs first sustainable, renewable, energy-powered cleantech cluster (Kingsley, 2013). In Scandinavia and Europe, Helsinki and âIntelligentâ Thessaloniki (Greece) are held up as examples of encouraging the development of new mobile applications utilising open data and using IT to increase competitiveness and sustainability, respectively (Komninos et al., 2013). In Europe, Barcelona, continues to be renowned for its Smart City Model and in November 2014 hosted its fourth Smart City Expo World Congress in as many years (see http://www.smartcityexpo.com/), while the Amsterdam Smart City initiative is held up as the example of how to retrofit a city to improve living and economic conditions and reduce carbon emissions (Hollands, 2015; Kirby, 2013). An important takeaway from this list of smart cities is the tailored nature of their approach. The objective is not just as technology users but as shrines of economic development practice. Some are using the smart city title to gain status by offering annual events to newcomers wishing to take up the mantle of smart city development (http://smartcitiesportugal.net). There is frequently an alliance between the prototype smart city builders and scholars discussing the phenomenon. Their perspectives come together under the umbrella of cities as machines for living. Both promote at least somewhat utopian visions based on technological fixes for those aspects of urban settlement and the concentration of human beings that make for human frustration and slow the flow of goods and services. The authors in this special issue are all aware of this perspective although some emphasise it more than others. A special issue on such a nebulous topic can never be comprehensive, but authors in this issue place the smart city in historical context, provide concrete examples of smart city applications and point to arenas where the concept and practice differ from prior urban technological fixes. The authors also indicate where the urban technological fix, in both its historical and contemporary forms has failedâfor example, in addressing equity concerns. They demonstrate that there is a difference between what we can measure and what we need to know. The limits of the smart city are created both by the absence of data applications that could drive collective rather than individual solutions and by the inability to address intangible qualities of cities that both improve and detract from the quality of urban life for city residents. These critiques have been part of the discussions on the closely related topic of âbig dataâ. Although the authors in this issue approach the subject of smart cities from very different angles, they generally agree that smart city technologies are ill-suited to solving the problems that lie at the heart of improving the quality of urban life. Poverty is not on the agenda of smart city planners. They may solve traffic problems, but it is not clear how they will regenerate failing schools or find ways to include neighbourhoods facing disinvestment. The contradiction between the promise of smart cities and its limited policy scope is aptly demonstrated in one of the most celebrated smart cities, Rio de Janeiro. The city, with its control centre filled with wall size computer monitors, can perhaps use forecasts of threatening weather to send out warnings of storm intensity thus leading to speedier evacuation. What it does not address is the question of why people build housing in such high-risk environments and what it would take to change this In this at smart city technologies with rather than the are evident in the eight this They some important about what the concept of smart cities is and and what it can and What do people by the âsmart A search of the up of to the Some the smart city as an urban that is than the urban environments we live in firms in the business of selling and technology to drive smart smart city is a new market for urban is an urban form to be or to make and however, are more in their smart cityâ to a few that use data to solve problems, such as waste management and traffic The authors in this special issue have different perspectives but the smart city by two is the use of technologies to the of urban example, built âsmartâ by is to be with new and economic growth. 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This that another cities of or more population will be to todayâs the cities by will be in size and these what do the in this issue have to about the of smart city the of et this of toward more of how and from where these have and how they are in places around the The is that although data applications and technological are their will be in cities are and where the and for collective goods are such as waste and to and cities are new ways to use IT and What smart city As and in this issue, many of these new cities with One of is with such as for in the et al., 2015). In another a set up by the for technology around energy and it is important to whether the new are being by new smart city technology or public budgets by special issue on in the city particularly by et al., and and the many ways that city was and being out to reduce do the come from for smart city could be in a such would have and been for through these of investments have to be in the of municipal the last of encompassing of and those of Smart city have to be in of whether they are and provide new such as for public Internet by do they for and what would be of public such as and of How and in what ways do such as those to and address in cities, such as New and and speed the process of the would provide a more of smart city is from smart city Although smart city technology investments are of rather than on the citizen they offer access to information on They can and interest the opportunity to conditions and the potential to improve the urban these potential however, on the of the contribution to the fact that the of an intervention has significant for its and and that each has an intended city the of an intervention can be open and is an important By what also highlights is the of and to use smart city The many of these is that a smart and how to it at Technology are to just how and these technology there is the In some of the cities of the world like as as a is Although not technology by todayâs the innovation in highlights how like a up a cityâ life to that are The absence of as basic as a of the how we have to to make technology for the of basic also that the smart city being developed for cities are years of the of most of the worldâs urban et al., 2015). to have a is like a can do and places to and gain from smart city we need more than the of of the smart city narrative currently we are to and propagating one size all and we need this will to beyond a of that of from places. of the authors in the special issue based on the about smart city the in his of the with in South and Portugal the of smart city who that the and of the technologies could be in the absence of human at the of case the out of the process and the idea that technology in to conception with In other the to that do not address As both and Kitchin we need more in to the and of smart city The authors in this special issue make significant toward this and demonstrate what we can from up the about smart cities. These could be built on through a series of that the of different cities in we might in and example, cities of the same size in the same and those that we might to differ but are as if they are example, cities in the Global South and or greenfield and The would the of smart city and their on economic development and of to be The would the ways in smart city and are being and in different and the ways in the concept and Although we can what urban the of the smart city movement is a like that in technology would and more efficient urban areas. Their was at an of time and from urban and urban policymakers to make for urban more that their smart city and CISCO have to the emphasis of some of their from being to and citizen (Kitchin, are also more with and out in urban to be as the next Intel, or other of smart city development. In an of with South and that has been a in will be is to have Smart Cities and different for each Smart we should not at technological rather at how to the and that more people come to these cities. is the more practical approach. need to at the is a place and should be but it is There is with the waste also need a people need to have A Smart City is when people to the city for have to that opportunity to them engaged of even the advocates and of smart city technologies the limits of beyond the to the and economic citizen have demonstrated the ability to and the of smart city technologies to in public and to for urban and also have been at utilising the of data from of and not for such as a that of public for applications to and for city to for urban and 2015). Cities are being by technology in the that the cities can the for smart city technology Director of and for the City of as is the case with technological the users into but by through collaboration and cities more their are more are to make using such as City data from users who are seeking to track life does this urban with technologies that to track of people on a how of the smart city is being toward of in unlikely to be or to use the of a What of the the the and of and the use of the data the absence of from the it just that neighbourhoods have or or is it that residents about on their the of or the of are they in need of service in their or frequently to get from to and 2015). In other do they need different data and point promise is that more information will improve the of urban life and to the of many and efficient The question is that promise to is the conception of the âsmart cityâ or does by the very nature of the data it important in In the smart city the is all to for on smart city we would that there is a need to form around the of cities. Although the promise of is up in the of such as and they are only one of smart city City are as in the that promise the as are their to and toward the array of urban city are also and should be held in the of the status of âsmart They are if for the future city have only the most most residents in and who may not the technology or who use it solely for Research on technology that the technology is that there are few places in the where a In a example, in the what limits is not the technology but its and the of the to and the technology et al., In we offer a of to As Kitchin if we to see smart city development and take on and more of new technology applications, it is to the that the practitioners what the technology can and what the application conditions are market and how applications are from These are The point is that we just to the We have to be and to get up and how new applications and technologies can be to improve the quality of urban life. we we out of this are that billion people will move to or be into urban by of these residents will live in or many of these cities will out of or and of these have to be built from the Smart city is into the future and at places and How and whether the to the discussions of the city of the future will on ability to and of this process of urban we up to the the current of smart cities to of the cities of The of change is to be that to provide the and of scholars are to have or on these cities of the this issue can as a point to an about the cities we in the future and whether and how smart city technologies are to provide
Smart Cities and Technologies
Human Mobility and Location-Based Analysis
Innovative Approaches in Technology and Social Development
Can big data make us happy? Social thinker Jeremy Rifkin thinks so â through the digitized global network the Internet of Things (IoT). In The Zero Marginal Cost Society, he posits how people, natural resources and more âwill be linked via sensors and software to the IoT platform, continually feeding Big Data to every node â businesses, homes, vehiclesâ. Rifkin sees the IoT as allowing economic exchange through a collaborative commons that will eclipse the capitalist marketplace and save the planet. Rifkin is known for his insight on social and technological trends. Although he does not sufficiently explain how the IoT will reduce environmental problems, the book has many stimulating ideas on everything from bitcoin and prosumerism to the smart economy. If you are not a millennial and have yet to try crowdfunding, this is for you. Pull up a garden chair â just remember to turn on the Wi-Fi.
B. Balamurugan, T. Poongodi, M. R. Manu, S. Karthikeyan · 5 authors
The moving image archive of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) includes a copy of the film The Double Day (1975), cataloged in the series Moving Images Relating to International Development Programs and Activities, 1979â1991, a collection of more than eight hundred titles âcreated to provide information on assistance programs supported by the Agency for International Development (AID).â1 Yet, The Double Day does not, in fact, directly depict or engage with any specific development or aid initiative. Instead, the filmâdirected by US-based Brazilian filmmaker Helena Solberg as part of the International Womenâs Film Project collective and described as âthe first Latin American feminist documentaryââexamines the gendered dynamics of paid and unpaid labor through the testimonies of women from Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Mexico.2 Its presence in the USAID archive is likely a consequence of its funding history, having received support from the Inter-American Foundation, a USAID-affiliated entity; the development agencies of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden; the United Nations Development Program; and US philanthropist Calvin Cafritz.3These transnational funding structures not only enabled the filmâs production but also determined its archival destination, which renders legible its place within the history of international development.4 The Double Dayâs institutional trajectory reflects the shifting configurations of aid, gender, and media during a historic moment when women were being repositioned at the center of what Arturo Escobar has described as developmentâs âregimes of visuality.â5 Especially relevant to The Double Dayâs production and exhibition was the international institutional framework of Women in Development (WID). Emerging in the early 1970s and culminating in United Nationsâ proclamation of 1975 as International Womenâs Year, WID emphasized womenâs participation in the global economy as both an index and mechanism of development. Indeed, The Double Day premiered at the World Conference of the International Womenâs Year, held in Mexico City.6 Within this context, the film forms part of a broader trajectory of media use by international organizations that intensified during the 1970sâas best exemplified by Media Habitat, a collection of 236 documentary films commissioned by the United Nations to represent urban and rural development initiatives for the 1976 Habitat Conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver. As a policy-shaping initiative, Media Habitat primarily featured films from the Global South intended not only to illustrate but also to help codify standardized audiovisual markers of âunderdevelopmentâ that determined access to the emerging global economic order and to international aid.7Framed in relation to these international institutions and their operations, The Double Day could similarly be considered âdevelopment mediaââexemplifying the type of nonfiction media produced and distributed outside of the commercial film circuits whose aspects and subcategories have been variously described in scholarship as nontheatrical, useful, sponsored, institutional, industrial, educational, or nonprofessional/amateur.8 Scholars working in this area have emphasized the institutional contexts of such mediaâs production and exhibition infrastructures as shaping its instrumentalized effects. From a feminist perspective, such an approach is crucial to grappling with the broader question of how âgender impacts [these worksâ] shape, content, and trajectories.â9 Yet we also argue that, taken in isolation, the institutional and infrastructural contexts are insufficient to account for the complex relationship between media and development, potentially not only limiting our understanding of the reach and impact of development but also distorting our interpretive conclusions. For example, to categorize The Double Day as âdevelopment mediaâ is to overlook the filmâs place within Solbergâs directorial oeuvre, as well as within the histories of both transnational womenâs filmmaking and radical Latin American documentary cinema to which it simultaneously belongs. Such exclusive framing is especially limiting given that women globally were disproportionately engaged in nonfiction production throughout the twentieth centuryâsometimes by political choice but more often due to structural exclusions from fiction filmmaking. Even in nonfiction historiography, however, institutional media has remained particularly marginal, reinforcing hierarchies that separate such works from the aesthetic and authorial frameworks through which film history has been constructed.10 This marginalization not only tends to erase womenâs contributions but also presumes a âweakâ or derivative authorship, rendering these films unworthy of the interpretive attention needed to apprehend their aesthetic and political complexity.11 The same dynamic is likely to structure assumptions about âdevelopment mediaâ as well.Categorizing The Double Day exclusively within this category would further prompt us to assume top-down institutional analyses that have been characteristic of both institutional media methodologies and the scholarship on development at large. This, in turn, would risk obscuring this filmâs radical Marxist approach to womenâs labor as well as its concrete contribution to activism and its attendant grassroot structures. In Mexico City, The Double Day became a catalyst for feminist solidarity in practice when one of the filmâs protagonists, Bolivian activist and trade unionist Domitila Barrios de Chungara, was invited to participate in the Tribune of Non-Governmental Organizations held alongside the official UN conference.12 There, Barrios de Chungara challenged Western feminist priorities by reframing the debate around labor, class, and imperialism, helping to articulate a shared Third World feminist agenda that significantly departed from the developmentalist vision of the United Nations and USAID.13 Seen through the lens of activist media, The Double Day helped forge transnational solidarity networks by enabling information exchange across the diverse voices that shaped its makingâfrom the women featured in the film to the activists who circulated itârevealing a considerably more dynamic interplay between institutional and grassroots or contingent media practices.Moreover, the filmâs Latin American contextâreflected in Solbergâs formation in Brazil as the only woman in Cinema Novo, its focus on women from across the region, and its premiere and key reception in Mexico Cityârequires grappling with the regional specificities of the very notion of development in its multiple iterations.14 Far from being an epistemological and political framework imposed solely by the Global North, both the practices of development and the theoretical foundations of developmentalism (understood as a broad and polysemic set of discourses) were shaped through the active participation of Latin American economists.15 Within this iteration, underdevelopment, as a constitutive notion of developmentalism, became central to a distinctly critical strand, which by the late 1960s became known as the dependency theory.16 This same approach is reflected in some of the best-known Latin American radical film manifestos of the time, arising precisely from the same milieus to which Solberg belonged.17These various considerations of the filmâs history illustrate the methodological challenges confronting feminist scholars seeking to assess the impact of development on media projects, theories, and practices. To disregard the developmentalist context of such works by emphasizing their political aesthetics and affects risks reproducing a romanticized narrative of heroic resistance (albeit from a feminist perspective). Yet to engage exclusively with their institutional and material infrastructures risks naturalizing developmentalismâs political and epistemological foundations at the expense of the goals and beliefs of the many women who participated in these projects. The contradictions and ambivalences that animate such histories call for feminist frameworks capable of holding both institutional complicity and radical possibility in view.This challenge resonates with ongoing debates about the politics of the archive and what Allyson Field has termed âthe practice of informed speculation.â18 As she reminds us, feminist, queer, and decolonial methodologies have long taught us to âpress at the limitsâ of the archive to âinoculate our scholarship against our evidenceâs afflictions.â19 The concern that the evidence we draw on in our analysis reproduces the very structures and blind spots of the dominant ideology and therefore shapes and delimits our interpretation becomes particularly urgent when engaging the developmentalist media corpus. Informed speculation offers an alternative by inviting the experimental, creative, and speculative rewriting of history, mobilizing the archive âin a project that runs counter to the original purpose, or the imperative to preserve, or the conditions that led to erasure.â20 Yet, as Field cautions, such speculative gestures must remain grounded in a deep and âintimate familiarity with the archiveâ that we are working with and against. Building on this imperative, we suggest that the developmentalist archive, in particular, demands expansion and critical reconsideration in ways that unsettle the very disciplinary frameworks through which it has been studied as well as the larger institutional contexts for such knowledge production.Our focus on The Double Day in the opening of this introduction thus foregrounds the entanglements of institutional and grassroots forces, local and international contexts, structural and interpersonal relations, and creative and economic factors that have shaped not only this film but the broader ecosystem of development media projectsâand their preservationâover time. Addressing such a constellation involves transgressing methodologically entrenched divisions between political economy and aesthetics, between material infrastructures and affective regimes; reckoning with divergent periodizations across film history and world economics; and situating these within the local specificities of womenâs movements and international institutional programs. It also demands attentiveness to the coexistence of multiple, and sometimes competing, understandings of developmentâeach historically, geographically, and ideologically situated.We imagine this special issue as an opening toward a critical dialogue, not only about how such an approach might be enacted in practice but also about the far-reaching ways development paradigms have shaped both our objects of study and the contours of the field itself. The decision to center institutionally sponsored films across all the essays in this issue is deliberate and enables us to highlight institutional critique as a vital methodological imperative within our analytical framework. Created within the frameworks of international organizations, state agencies, or NGOs, these filmsâ histories make legible the institutional logics that underwrite their production. Yet our critique does not stop at these specific entities. Rather, we argue for a broader interrogation of the political conditions and institutional infrastructures that shape media and knowledge production more generally. This includes contemporary corporations embedded in the digital platform economy, from streaming services to the rapid expansion of AI. Equally critical is a reflexive examination of academia itself, where departments of economics, political science, and centers for development have played a formative role in producing and legitimizing developmentalist theories and policy frameworks. While the humanities and arts have at times offered critical alternatives, they have also frequently mirrored and reinforced many of the same developmentalist assumptions. A feminist analysis of the nexus between development and media must therefore unsettle not only dominant archives but also the institutional and disciplinary foundations of our own scholarly practices.As scholars, we share the complex position of navigating the same tensions between institutional complicity and emancipatory aspiration as many of the media-makers whose work we study. Mirroring our subjects is also the transnational, collective mode of this special issueâs own production as it emerges from an ongoing informal working group we have sustained over several years. While relying on institutional and disciplinary affordancesâsuch as university funding for conferences or access to academic publishing platformsâwe have been working toward creating a community that exceeds, and often resists, the prevailing logics of our academic institutions. Our aim has been to create a space for shared inquiry and mutual support that pushes back against disciplinary siloing and technocratic neoliberal assessment modes of both labor and knowledge productionâand this certainly extends to our experience collaborating with the journal editors throughout the publication process. Our goal has been to examine both the persistence and variability of developmentalism, understood as what Gustavo Esteva calls a âpowerful but fragile semantic constellation,â as a conceptual formation that has historically inspired, legitimized, and mobilized media projects across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.21 And gendered biopolitics, from population control to gender mainstreaming, have remained integral to development policies and media practices, recurring across formats from institutional newsreels to film festivals.We share the conviction that, far beyond the history of nonfiction institutional media, development (as both a broad ideological project and a network of material and institutional practices) and developmentalism (as a set of discourses and theoretical models associated with development) have exerted a far-reaching influence on film and media cultures at large. As such, they must be treated as a major force in shaping global film and media systems and also the many ongoing assumptions behind their critical discourses. The discipline of communication studies was founded on modernization theory governed by Cold War goals of dissemination of Western liberal democracy around the world, while âan area studies framework allowed compartmentalizing Western and non-Western outcomes of technologies that were always claimed to be universal.â22 Despite critique from postcolonial and critical race studies, many of these frameworks have remained foundational for media theory.23 In historical scholarship, as we increasingly move beyond âmodernityâ as a dominant conceptual anchor, engaging with practices and discourses of development opens more precise analytical pathways. These film and mediaâs entanglements with the logics of and economic and the associated with as well as their conceptual underdevelopment, and impact in as diverse as and of media aesthetic and paradigms in film and film and funding are developmentalist assumptions to the they to underwrite the narrative and logics of and global media from the structure of the film to the cultures of argue that a examination of the historical entanglements between film and developmentalist aesthetics, modes of as well as infrastructures and critical the and that our contemporary media is a of the historical contours of development as a field of inquiry embedded within a of some of the methodologies by the featured in this special a of this complex history, to the larger at in media, development, and gender all its development a it as an of be with practices as divergent as and in In as we work on this the of the of the USAID the ideological that have the history of international the and of this on the global its a from development as a global practice and as an institutional and which over the has as a with its own media Yet or does not erase the historical impact of these the contradictions they have reflected and over the as the of development several crucial to the economic theories of development initiatives to and through the of the development an international policy framework at from the Global to the of the Global the by the political role of and the of the International the on was challenged by dependency theory and at development as global structural the neoliberal of the the Programs by the and World imposed and as conditions for and forms of assistance became known as the major markers for international development development has moving beyond economic to such as the Human Development and the Development and from international organizations such as the United Nations to a broader network of These frameworks increasingly of and liberal of and with what in many ways to various while the of the to developmentâs epistemological more scholarship has toward a of its and material the field has to a of and critical by and scholars, which development as a dynamic of conceptual and political to these the studies in this special issue call for sustained analysis in place of In we draw from a of and that in of of gender and to this special issue engage that and from Mexico to contemporary specific local historical of global distinctly feminist methodologies as well as attention to studies that this issue a in the global history of development on and documentary work in Mexico how early women infrastructures as of while US films an early of state and transnational on a outside the Global as the of developmentalist both the and markers of development media, its to the and Latin central grounded in archival also womenâs in transnational and the methodological of archives on study of the series to a a digital media not by but by women not as but as subjects and within circuits of neoliberal and the aesthetics and of how developmentâs has models of to contemporary neoliberal paradigms of and analysis how digital and gender and practices, discourses on and their of these essays the of some of the historical of developmentalist as the question of the role of the state within such on a notion of economic as a and the dominant of development that the state as the for and through infrastructural projects. This understanding of development was shared across both of the as well as in the Third The United and the increasingly mobilized international in the of the modes of international at the postcolonial of policy and ideological These programs were at the expansion of their and of while with the and decolonial of The conceptual between modernization and development that the Cold in of and hierarchies of that long and As an of postcolonial their role as of international aid concern about the of Western development projects. In alternative across the Global South that to structural between and through policies of and In many they were further the global structures. In Latin for example, this approach was through organizations such as the United Nations for Latin and the both developmentalist projects and their have taken many forms historically, and they have and they have been to a of projects, and postcolonial and development has been and in ways and with frequently political While many of these alternative frameworks the embedded in dominant Western they often technocratic and assumptions. gender and gender as for the of to be shaped by This becomes particularly in the media that of development where women frequently a crucial associated with and women were as both the subjects and of their participation in the and labor often as the index of In this study of from the 1970s how women were as of this as these about womenâs urban and recurring and of a within the own of and critique that official examination of archives and enables a feminist interrogation of their mobilizing a of the in the of contribution to this issue similarly the of a dynamic within as well as across ideological the of womenâs and the media of the and as active in labor and as integral to the technocratic women became of as their labor remained a of and analysis and archival with attention to the specific of and It also transnational that as a and affective a nexus of and practices through which gender, media, and developmentalism one film not as a but as part of the of alongside and work a broader concern of this special media as a of developmentalist projects. The debates the World and which international such as the United Nations and a critical historical for such primarily by postcolonial and of the for the of media and communication infrastructures in as to counter Western The a between and economic how systems of media and reinforced global hierarchies of and in an agenda that supported and alternative media infrastructures across postcolonial contexts, the framework gender as an analytical This âgender in the 1970s by of the Women in Development in relation to The Double its political critique of with its broader to center women in development policy through and This was also in of media, which was shaped by its international reach and audiovisual production and and and Yet, as WID institutional it also to the and of the womenâs development programs often by in These were by a of studies, and on and the to of womenâs presence and through the of their economic and In this on the filmmaker this history directly by the and of for women by the WID framework during the with and agencies the of and against Women in at the of the neoliberal turn, when institutional media often the only to access and support to projects. The an by this dynamic as of the from the Global South are to engage with the developmentalist assumptions funding models that their similarly the as a in developmentalist media history by the of and centers on the Film a between of and the attention toward the and labor by and work was foundational the of and the of audiovisual aid, as both a of development projects and a critical for their the in this issue argue for a with media, gender, and developmentalism as an field of that is and shaped by feminist and methodologies and that challenge the entanglements between academic knowledge production and and technocratic development And while methodological these dynamics at the structural the of feminist in media and cinema by this the very a