What’s new under the digital skyline? History and politics of the smart city

Journal title SOCIOLOGIA URBANA E RURALE
Author/s Niccolò Cuppini
Publishing Year 2020 Issue 2020/122
Language Italian Pages 15 P. 12-26 File size 196 KB
DOI 10.3280/SUR2020-122002
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The smart city is a planetary narrative, project and practice that has become hegemonic par-ticularly after the global financial crisis of 2008. The article presents a critical investigation of the concept, discussing its multiple meanings and contents in economic, political and social arena. Moreover, it deepens the so called ‘smartness mandate’ and it sustains that the smart city is not a city at all, but rather it would be necessary to frame it within the long term process of dismantling the historical city in favour of a new spatial assemblage organized for the capi-talist extraction of value from a reconfiguring territoriality. In this sense, the article suggest a continuity with the urban transformations played by urbanists and architects in the last centu-ries, and it considers the smart city as a "sum" of these processes that is emerging within the so called ‘industrial revolution 4.0’, analysing it through a (techno)political gaze.

Keywords: Industrial revolution 4.0, machines à habiter, (techno)politics, smartness, genealo-gy, assemblages

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Niccolò Cuppini, Cosa si muove sotto lo skyline digitale? Storia e politica della smart city in "SOCIOLOGIA URBANA E RURALE" 122/2020, pp 12-26, DOI: 10.3280/SUR2020-122002