La smart city e la fine della città

The essay offers a critical reading on the smart city and hypothesizes some future scenari-os of its development. Contrary to both the optimistic predictions of efficiency, security and sustainability that animate a wide range of supporters of the smart city, and the catastrophic Orwellian prophecies that imagine a society entirely subject to forms of control and molecular exploitation, the essay focuses on a different hypothesis: the ultimate goal of the smart city is the elimination of the city as it has been transmitted over the centuries.

By reinterpreting the project The Planet as a Festival by Italian designer Ettore Sottsass and the New Babylon City project by Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuys, the essay elaborates on a number of urban het-erotopias that represent both the antecedents and future outcomes of a society that has entrust-ed all its daily practices to "machines" and - crossing them in its conclusions with the forecasts of writer Clifford Simak - questions the upcoming developments of the so-called "intelligent cities". [Publisher's text].