The role of intermediary spaces in crafting the smart city industry and urban futures: a case study of Taipei City

Forward-looking urban transformation strategies often overlook the intricate geographical processes through which intermediaries facilitate the growth of emerging industries positioned as urban future paths. This paper reconceptualizes the intermediary space as an analytical framework by integrating assemblage thinking to explore how intermediaries strategically shape Taipei's smart city industry as a future path for urban economic development. Drawing on qualitative research, including twenty-nine in-depth interviews with smart city firms, intermediaries, and field observations at the Smart City Summit Expo (SCSE) in Taipei, this paper argues that smart city firms strategically mobilize SCSE as an intermediary space characterized by performative spatiality to assert their subjectivity as a transformative urban pathway. Three forms of strategic intermediary practices are identified: technological assemblage, curatorial practices, and the creation of spatial atmospheres. These practices critically accelerate the processes of becoming, scaling, and affecting the emergence of Taipei's smart city industry. Moreover, the SCSE, as a performative intermediary space, bridges the territorial capacities of tech clusters, positioning the smart city industry as a distinctive subjectivity within the latecomer context of global smart city development.