La governance delle città intelligenti. Tecnologia, innovazione e smartness

The contemporary scenario has determined a growing attention to cities as centers of governance, recognizing to urban government a fundamental role in solving global problems. Urban governance has increasingly been associated with approaches that focus on technology and innovation for the development of models that make cities smarter. Starting from the concept of smart city, the paper highlights how the mere use of technological components is not sufficient to produce benefits in social and environmental terms, though very important, but they always need to be developed and used in an integrated manner through a smart governance. The paper concludes that in absence of real processes of social innovation, technology risks, in certain cases, to reserve a decisive role in the decisions about the future of cities to technocratic elites.