Smart cities, smart people, smart planning

Abstract

The paper starts from the evidence, in many cases, of confusion between smart city with digital one, while the real goal of a smart city should not consist in filling the city with electronic toys, but taking care of the whole urban environment in a clever way. In this sense, smart city is a pleonasm, because cities have always been smart, also if, recently, they have lost their smartness.

After discussing these concepts, this paper proposes a wider smart city approach, aimed at environmental sustainability, through the prevention and treatment of urban pathologies. Based also on thermodynamics concepts, the paper illustrates how to prevent environmental pathologies, because a really smart city controls and constantly checks its metabolism.