Smart Cities” Meet “Anchor Institutions

The concepts “smart city” and “anchor institution”—both popular in policy circles—intersect at broadband infrastructure in ways that highlight the importance of civil society institutions to digital networks. Given the close alignment of broadband and smart city policy goals, the centrality of connectivity to the smart city vision, and the importance of anchor institutions to broadband, it is surprising that the smart cities discourse does not engage more directly with the role of anchor institutions. The use case of public libraries shows how anchor institutions can extend connectivity and the benefits of robust broadband. More broadly, there are lessons here about the meaning of “public-private partnerships,” often at the heart of smart city plans, 1 and the virtues of strengthening the public side of that relationship