Smart urbanism in historical occurrences and recurrences: An evolutionary perspective between critical and progressive factors

Abstract

The disruptive explosion of technology that has characterised these last decades has, erroneously, been considered in an early period as the main plan of interest for the studies of global phenomena, especially smart phenomena, while instead the exact opposite is true, because these phenomena represent projections of the new micro-urban phenomena that are seen in smart cities and in the corollaries related to smart urbanism. The most significant emblematic smart urban elements are able to highlight the transition towards new sociocultural paradigms at a global level, which constitute and represent the theoretical foundations of every current process of urban regeneration and renewal. Since the 1980s when the informatics revolution exploded, the magnitude of the revolutionary effects on, first, urban and second, global paradigms have been continuously determined by smart urbanism, as touched upon within the current analysis. It makes sense to reflect on the most relevant transition, in terms of urban planning implications, that has already characterised the course of history and which seems to be recurring in another form: the transition from a hunter-gatherer society to a farmer society by the use of advanced technologies. This transition is currently fully present, in which urban environments become smart cities and smart work becomes prey. Therefore, the citizens are moving away from hunters of traditional work and are increasingly becoming farmers of smart work. The current paper, based on theoretical reflections, reviews research in the field to highlight that there are conflicting views in smart city planning and analyses the concept of smart urbanism with historical comparisons, focusing on both positive and negative urban implications.