This paper explores the case study of the ASEAN Smart Cities Network (ASCN) to uncover the motivations and potential challenges associated with technocratic regionalism, by which we mean technology-driven forms of regional integration and consolidation. In the case of the ASCN, technocratic regionalism is used to spur urban development through the rollout of smart city plans, policies and projects across Southeast Asia. As such, it is a regional strategy designed to scale smartness, and thus deprovincialise the city by embedding it within transnational flows of capital, ideas and expertise. At the same time, however, already existing urban issues have the potential to re-provincialise the city. The vagaries of local contexts, structures of governance and urban cultures complicate processes of scalar ascendency and thus foreground the paradox of (de)provincialisation. We identify three challenges – divergent infrastructural developments, vertical and horizontal (non-)integration, and the need to reconcile (in)formal spaces of the “smart” city – that underpin the translational politics of technocratic regionalism, and which are likely to compromise the efficacy and success of the ASCN.

本文探讨了东盟智慧城市网络 (ASCN) 的案例研究，以揭示与技术官僚区域主义相关的动机和潜在挑战，我们指的是技术驱动的区域一体化和整合形式。就 ASCN 而言，技术官僚区域主义被用来通过在东南亚推出智慧城市计划、政策和项目来刺激城市发展。因此，它是一项旨在扩大智慧的区域战略，从而通过将城市嵌入资本、思想和专业知识的跨国流动中来使城市去省域化。然而，与此同时，已经存在的城市问题有可能使城市重新省级化。当地环境的变幻莫测，治理结构和城市文化使标量上升的过程复杂化，从而突出了（去）省级化的悖论。我们确定了三个挑战——不同的基础设施发展、纵向和横向（非）整合，以及协调“智能”城市的（非）正式空间的需求——这些挑战支撑着技术官僚区域主义的转化政治，并且可能会妥协ASCN 的有效性和成功。