Smart Cities and Rights: new perspectives of Consumption in the light of Sociability

Abstract

The work aims to investigate the configuration of urban spaces in a “smart” way and the role actually played by smart cities in the perspective of satisfying the rights – especially social rights – held by people who live in those cities. The interpretative perspective chosen in the essay is to assume citizenship as a set of juridical expectations which legitimizes the role of public authorities, and in that sense to assume consumption as a key to understand the relationship between public administration and citizens, taking into account the approximation of that relationship to that existing between producer and consumer. Smart cities must be constructed in this perspective of service to the citizen, in order to correct regulatory choices underlying technological developments towards discriminatory outcomes, social divide. In this framework social housing is very representative of difficulties accompanying attempts to make social services (really) available in smart urban spaces.