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Borelli, Guido

La smart city e la fine della città

2020 - Franco Angeli

96-112 p.

  • 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].

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Sociologia urbana e rurale : XLII, 122, 2020