ABSTRACT
This contribution outlines a legal theoretical approach to the “smart city”. Smart cities – as concepts on the digitisation of urban space – conflate two transformative “mega-trends” of the twenty-first century, digitisation and urbanisation, both of which are being discussed quite a lot in the social sciences and, at least recently, in jurisprudence. Focusing on the implications of smart cities for law and governance means reformulating many of the legal theoretical problems commonly associated with transnationalisation – like legal polycentricity or fragmentation – yet from a new, differing perspective, which reproduces notions of “glocalism” in a rather radical way. A legal theoretical reconstruction of the concept of the smart city may, on the one hand, diagnose new challenges for the law, which are fundamental and practical at once. On the other hand, it helps to clarify the conceptual role and the practical importance of overarching legal values, principles or objectives like those in Sustainable Development Goal 11 and may be of use in the complex task of reconstructing their substance. The contribution concludes with a general and preliminary proposal for a deepened exploration of the normative consequences of the digitisation of urban spaces.
