ABSTRACT
Smart urbanism is naturally concerned with the role that high technologies, and the shapers of these, play in the way cities are being developed or re-conceived. This chapter’s aim is to look at the role of physical urban space and design in “smart” concepts and interventions. It discusses how the role of space seems to have radically shifted with the emergence of smart city visions. The chapter briefly looks at examples of such approaches, and advocates for the need to re-frame smart civic design discourses and processes to include physical urban space as an agent and key component of urban development, rather than a platform for technology. Doing this, the chapter argues, calls for overcoming the idea of the smart city being a product of technology, and indeed articulated through the application of a series of technological products. It is our urban design knowledge and practice that needs to be at the same time updated and included.
