The terms "smart cities", like "smart airports", has been bandied around ever since planners and futurists realised things could be done to connect people to their environments and each other - in a supposedly better way.
Being "smart" about urban and structural organisation is one thing, yet it remains extremely unclear if a digital overhaul of our world helps with some of the core issues affecting those who probably don't care about tech.
The term “smart city” is interesting yet not important, because nobody defines it. “Smart” is a snazzy political label used by a modern alliance of leftist urbanites and tech industrialists.
To deem yourself “smart” is to make the nimbyites and market-force people look stupid.
However, the cities of the future won’t be “smart,” or well-engineered, cleverly designed, just, clean, fair, green, sustainable, safe, healthy, affordable, or resilient.
They won’t have any particularly higher ethical values of liberty, equality, or fraternity, either.
The future smart city will be the internet, the mobile cloud, and a lot of weird paste-on gadgetry, deployed by City Hall, mostly for the sake of making towns more attractive to capital.