On the difficulty of agreeing upon a universal logic for city standards: A response to Schindler and Marvin

In a paper published within the Debates section of City last year, Schindler and Marvin laid out an agenda for the study of city standards, which they argued impose a universal logic of control. While they described three published standards and situated city standards within the context of smart cities, their failure to consider the institutional setting of the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) led them to overemphasise the coherence and unity with which city standards are actually developed. In this response piece, I correct this omission by excavating the origins of TC 268, the technical committee dedicated to city standards. This reveals not a universal logic of control, but a body of expertise in contentious and contingent emergence. While ultimately, I agree with Schindler and Marvin that city standards are deserving of greater attention from critical urban scholars, I argue for a more situated response to their politics that leaves open the possibility of them having positive effects on urban equity and social change.