Intelligent cities? Disentangling the symbolic and material effects of technopole planning practices in Cyberjaya, Malaysia.

Abstract

Cyberjaya was heralded in the mid-1990s as the Multimedia Super Corridor's (MSG) flagship 'intelligent city' and designed to prepare Malaysia and its citizens for a giant leap forward into an imagined new 'information age'. The urban mega-project constituted a state led response to the much hyped 'Siliconisation of Asia' and was planned to fast-track national development through investment in information and communications technologies (ICTs). The thesis seeks to examine how the discursive architectures of the 'information society' were mobilised, by whom, and with what material consequences as technopole planning practices were inscribed on the Malaysian landscape. Ten years on from the excessive high-tech utopianism and urban boosterism that accompanied the city's launch, the thesis promotes qualitative methodologies to examine the critical human geographies of the MSG. Specifically, empirical analysis addresses the uneven socio-spatial consequences and 'splintering urbanisms' manifesting in Malaysia's emerging spaces of neoliberal modernity. Research methodologies included in-depth interviews with political and business elites in Malaysia, participant observation with residents and workers in Cyberjaya, and a critical discourse analysis of the MSG policy and promotional materials. To this end, the thesis seeks to disentangle the symbolic and material effects of technopole planning practices in Cyberjaya.