Retorica della Smart City e degli Smart Villages. Tecnologia senza intelligenza?

Smart city concept has quickly reached a high degree of popularity and started a broad spectrum of urban applications. Smart cities are configured as highly technological contexts, but also more sustainable and with a balanced management of natural resources and the urban environment. More recently, under the impetus of various EU initiatives, the concept of smartness has also been extended to many smaller towns. In particular, the focus on the digital divide issue between urban and rural areas has led to the need to bridge this gap through policies for the digitization of essential services. The application of information and communication technologies (ICT) in inland areas and small towns is the basic prerequisite for the revitalization of services and places in marginal areas with poor infrastructure and limited development prospects. It is precisely this perspective that has fueled the idea of "Smart Villages" in European policies. In the smart perspective, technological component assumes a decisive importance for searching innovative solutions, however this vision also presents possible risks related to an interpretation focused solely on the dimension of information technology as tool for improving the quality of life. In this framework, the paper proposes a less emphatic vision of smartness by highlighting the critical issues related to the rhetoric of intelligence in large urban agglomerations as well as in small villages, i.e. in the city tout court.