Less Smart More City

Smart is an expression used in recent years in science, and it refers to someone or something that shows a lively intelligence, with a quick learning curve and a fast response to external stimuli. The present scenario is dominated by the accelerated technological development that involves every aspect of life, enhancing the everyday tools through the use of information and digital processing: everything is smart, even cities. But when you pair the term smart to a complex organism such as the city the significance of the two together is open to a variety of interpretations, as shown by the vast and varied landscape of definitions that have occurred in recent years. Our contribution presents the results of research aimed at analyzing and interpreting this fragmented scene mainly, but not exclusively, through lexical analysis, applied to a textual corpus of 156 definitions of smart city. In particular, the study identified the main groups of stakeholders that have taken part in the debate, and investigated the differences and convergences that can be detected: Academic, Institutional, and Business worlds. It is undeniable that the term smart has been a veritable media vehicle that, on the one hand brought to the center of the discussion the issue of the city, of increasing strategic importance for the major challenges that humanity is going to face, and on the other has been a fertile ground on which to pour the interests of different groups and individuals. In a nutshell we can say that from the analysis the different approaches that each group has used and supported emerge clearly and another, alarming, consideration occurs: of the smart part of “Smart City” we clearly grasp the tools useful to the each group of stakeholders, and of the city part, as a collective aspiration, there is often little or nothing.