★It's a concise and scathing book about one of the most commonly used concepts of the early 2000s, Smart City.

The adjective “smart” is quintessential of the digital age we are living in, which has made so many promises but kept so few of them. Everything seems to be “intelligent”, from toothbrushes to cities, those smart cities which in the past decade have won over the collective imagination and shaped the work of town-planners, officials, politicians and whole industrial sectors. However, there is also a great deal of criticism: disconnection from the real problems people have, the technocratic quest to dominate our urban lives, the obsessions for surveillance and control, the inability to think of strategies that put citizens – not businesses or town-planners – at the centre of the process of development. This book analyses some of the criticisms of smartcities and studies the connections between the digital infrastructures that have reshaped the technological landscape of cities and the political and economic programmes that have been undertaken or could be undertaken in the short term.

Francesca Bria is the director of the Department of Technology and Digital Innovation of Barcelona City Council. She teaches at Imperial College, London, is a consultant of the European Commission for the development of the Internet and of smart cities and has worked for various organizations and public institutions for innovation.

Evgeny Morozov is one of today’s leading intellectuals in the debate on the social and political effects of the development of technology. A journalist, writer and academic, in Italy he has published The Net Delusion: the Dark Side of Internet Freedom, Contro Steve Jobs, Silicon Valley. I signori del silicio and Internet non salverà il mondo and To Save Everything, Click Here.