When does the contract decide, not the technology?
The contract decided it, not the technology — 18 documented cases in this atlas, each linked to its sources.
The test: Did the money structure — concession, guarantee, permit, commission — set the outcome before the system was switched on?
The most consequential decision in these projects was signed years before anything was installed. Busan and Gimhae guaranteed a private operator's revenue against a consultant's forecast of 176,358 daily riders; 30,084 came, and the two cities have been paying the difference ever since. Manila paid its camera contractor out of the fines, in a programme whose stated purpose was removing the financial incentive from enforcement. Three South American bike shares — Bogotá, Santiago, São Paulo — cost their cities almost nothing and, as each entry works out in its own words, bought them almost nothing to govern.
Two labels, kept apart. 6 of these are recorded as failed — stopped, cancelled, or demonstrably not doing what it was built to do — and 12 as scaled back, which mostly means a service that still runs but delivered materially less than promised. An entry earns either label only where a named source says so.
✔ Every published entry is checked against the public sources it cites before publication.
The 18 documented cases
The other five patterns
The whole record
Every entry in the atlas that failed or was scaled back, all six patterns in one place, with the arithmetic behind the share: smart city project failures.