Governing Technology-based Urbanism: Degeneration to Technocracy or Development to Progressive Planning?

The current vision of ‘smart development’, based on a technology paradigm, increasingly shapes urbanism. This technology-based urbanism prevails, even when local governments play a role in responding to a growing issue, such as the improving of today’s quality of life by integrating ICT with the built environment. Multi-source big data, real-time processing for complex data and sensors are affecting city users’ behaviors, and consequently, ways of knowing and governing cities. The challenges and opportunities of data governance in technology-driven smart city initiatives are significant and can have long-term positive impacts for people and their city. However, it can fall into technocractic governance because technological solutions and business interests over social inclusion and urban innovation and, for that reason, by following the mania and the rhetoric of ‘citizen-centered approaches’ and ‘user-generated data’. Starting from this point of view, this chapter seeks to answer the following question: Which strategies of smart city development influence smart governance? Whilst there is much written about issues of data governance in smart cities, there are limited studies that deal with pros and cons of smart governance in local-level initiatives. The chapter presents insights from Italian smart governance in local-level initiatives, and discusses challenges and future research.