Following the trajectories of vaccines against foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in France and Britain up to the 1960s, this paper will show how vaccine efficacy has two meanings: 1) technical – or experimental – which refers to test protocols and regimes of evidence, and 2) practical – or experiential – which refers to the experience various actors have of diseases and their direct or indirect impacts on society and the economy, as well as on representations and imaginaries they share about diseases, vaccines, and vaccination. The assessment protocols in the two countries are analysed to show how these two meanings are deeply intertwined and influence the different public policies chosen by each country. Although statistically assessed, the efficacy of the same vaccines appears situated, depending not only on regimes of evidence but also on the reality of agricultural practices, on national stock exchanges, and on various imaginaries about animal health and the absence of disease that differ between and within countries. As a consequence, this analysis reveals how public policies regarding vaccination do not always come from governmental incentives but can also emerge from private and local initiatives.

This paper highlights the need and opportunities for constructively combining different types of (analogue and data-driven) knowledges in evidence-informed policy decision-making in future smart cities. Problematizing the assumed universality and objectivity of data-driven knowledge, we call attention to notions of “positionality” and “situatedness” in knowledge production relating to the urban present and possible futures. In order to illustrate our arguments, we draw on a case study of strategic urban (spatial) planning in the Cambridge city region in the United Kingdom. Tracing diverse knowledge production processes, including top-down data-driven knowledges derived from urban modeling, and bottom-up analogue community-based knowledges, allows us to identify locationally specific knowledge politics around evidence for policy. The findings highlight how evidence-informed urban policy can benefit from political processes of competition, contestation, negotiation, and complementarity that arise from interactions between diverse “digital” and “analogue” knowledges. We argue that studying such processes can help in assembling a more multifaceted, diverse and inclusive knowledge-base on which to base policy decisions, as well as to raise awareness and improve active participation in the ongoing “smartification” of cities.