<p>This conceptual paper explores existing debates related to urban local communities who hack the city to make their own spaces for meeting, making and learning. Referring to these as ‘hacker-maker’ spaces acknowledges the alternative cultural activist roots of hacking and making, shifting focus from technological innovation to the social activism of occupying unused urban spaces for development of mutually supportive networks and shared resources. This paper argues that these spaces, activities and networks lead to emergent forms of incidental civic cultural learning as an authentic part of lifelong learning in smart learning cities. The smart citizen is therefore considered in terms of a culture of mutual self-realisation and right to the city, within citizen-led efficient, effective, collaborative smart learning environments. Areas of debate lead to reflections on the pedagogical foundations of civic learning for smart citizen self-realisation, with combinations of situated, dialogic and social activist pedagogies in an action-research orientated, learner-experience based context. Envisaged as a ‘pedagogy for urban space incidental civic learning’, this flexible framework would seek to support incidental civic cultural learning in these hacker-maker spaces for building value and mutual trust within urban communities.</p>