For some years, “smart cities” have aroused a great deal of interest, particularly in a context of renewed concern with towns and cities, which provide the optimal experimental scale when it comes to ecological transition and resilience to climate change. Though there is no unanimously accepted definition, “smart cities” nonetheless have widely recognized characteristics: reconciling economic development, a reduced environmental footprint and improvement of the quality of life of city-dwellers by drawing on available –and, particularly, digital– technologies. Given these objectives, plans for smart cities belonged for a long time to the category of urban utopias. However, with rapid technological advance and a growing awareness of the need for ecological transition, utopia has gradually been caught up by reality.
In this article, Carlos Moreno shows us how urban “smartness” represents a new paradigm for utopian thinking and may offer a real opportunity for our urban areas and their citizens to evolve. He also stresses the importance of not confining ourselves to a focus on the technological dimension and contributing to the emergence of human smart cities.
