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This article examines what smartness does on the ground by examining how its anticipatory media visions have been interpreted and acted on in policy decisions and local implementations since the early 2000s. Using a comparative-historical analysis that draws on fieldwork in aspiring smart cities in the United States and Europe, we argue that the visions of smartness are neither singular nor fixed across time and space. Instead, the role of smartness in diffusing new technologies is recruited and reshaped in the present to lend legitimacy to future public and private interventions. We first demonstrate that the narrative of crisis, often associated with smartness, shifted from a pre-2008 emphasis on sustainability and climate change to a post-financial crisis engagement with entrepreneurship and platformization. We then discuss how the development of smart city initiatives has followed divergent paths in the United States and Europe, with big tech companies dominating in the former and the 'living lab' model prevailing in the latter. Our analysis highlights the importance of investigating the complex relationships between anticipatory media visions of smartness and their varying, down-to-earth implementations in the built environment rather than solely focusing on the discursive appeal of techno-idealism. It also explains the enduring appeal of smartness as an urban vision, despite its various shortcomings, by revealing its adaptability to the changing social and political–economic shifts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this special issue is on the energy transformations taking place in several European countries (Austria, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland) and at the federal and subnational (state) levels in the United States with special attention given to California. The cases examined all have federalist structures, and with the exception of the federal level of the United States, all have relatively ambitious climate and renewable energy targets. We compare these states out of an interest in better understanding how federalism interacts with energy transitions. The comparison is also intriguing as at the federal level the United States presents a stark contrast with the federalist European countries considered in this special issue but at the subnational level many similarities can be found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]