For better or worse, the smart city has opened up many avenues and opportunities for disruption. One path that is currently being followed around the globe concerns what are commonly known as ‘digital twins’. According to one smart city evangelist, digital twins are ‘hot’:

A digital twin is a virtual model that replicates an actual city. It allows modellers and decision-makers – politicians, engineers, architects, real estate developers and planners – to pull virtual levers and test ‘what happens if ‘ scenarios, posing questions such as what would be the impact of a new shopping centre on traffic congestion in the area, or how would the city's economy react to a change in business taxation?

Such transcendent oversight and power is the Holy Grail for many. That is why cities from Singapore to Newcastle are rushing to develop their digital twin, convinced that they can model, predict and then test interventions without the contested, costly and time-consuming bother of actually talking to and persuading residents and communities. Some greenfield cities like Amaravati, a US$6.5 billion new smart city in Andhra Pradesh, were created or ‘born’ with a digital twin. According to Michael Jansen, CEO of Cityzenith, a company that develops digital twin software, ‘Everything that happens in Amaravati will be scenarioized in advance to optimize outcomes, and adjusted on the fly to keep pace with change. This represents a giant leap forward for cities, how they’re designed, built, and managed, and how they optimize their relationships with the private sector and their own citizens.’ The superficial appeal of such approaches is not difficult to see: