Discursive Pitfalls of the 'Smart City' concept

Supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, Guardian Cities is the homonymous newspaper’s recently launched platform (2014), which is ‘devoted to sharing ideas, reporting and discussions about the future of cities around the world’ (Guardian Cities on Facebook). Among the media world’s leading publications on future-oriented urban policies, the platform approaches some of the most pressing concerns that contemporary city planning faces, one of them being the controversial ‘smart city’ concept which has become a byword for urban utopias and dystopias. A textual selection of the Guardian Cities site’s peculiar blend of news, commentary, online discussions and analysis has been critically investigated in order to elicit the recurrent threads and discursive tensions of a global debate that extends over an ambitious axiological map – technology hype, sustainability, social inclusion and active citizenship being among its bold promises.