The “Smart City”: An Instrument that Tackles Inequalities or that Amplifies them? The Constitutional Perspective of Social Peripheries

The importance of the smart city as a concept-both in its technological and environmental declination-finds final confirmation in the NRRP Mission 5c2.2 on “Urban regeneration and social housing,” which marks the relationship between urban peripheries and the smart city. The spread of this new and multi-purpose notion leads to debates that impact first and foremost on the constitutional level. Before thinking of smart solutions for cities, it is crucial to discuss what kind of smart city that is to be built. From a constitutional perspective it must be a city inhabited by embodied people, who consider things as goods before commodities and in it entertain meaningful human relationships and not only economic transactions. For this purpose, those who look to the smart city from the perspective of constitutional law are tasked with problematizing this notion in light of the Constitution.