Introduction: smart cities all over >Smart cities, a global crusade

1The digitalization of the society has become a global phenomenon. New information and communication technologies and the broad application of these technologies are changing industrial production, logistics, private and governmental services all over the world. And they have already changed information and communication modes of citizens. Driven by a few powerful globally active corporations, the new technologies and the multiple services based on these technologies are rapidly transforming every day life working styles, mobility and shopping patterns. Nobody can permanently escape from using the personal i-phone device, which is gradually replacing traditional information and communication habits.

2Industries that are not adapting their production modes, banks and insurances that are not digitalizing their services and consumer good enterprises and fashion chains that do not make use of e-shopping services, loose their clients and threaten to decline. Health and higher education institutions are experimenting with e-medicine and e-learning. City governments, still poorly equipped to participate pro-actively in providing digital urban infrastructure, hasten to introduce e-government services to junior and senior citizens. Promoted by influential ICT industries, cities hope to solve chronic congestion problems and security concerns by applying digital technologies to improve mobility in cities and monitoring public spaces. An enormous transformation in cities is going on.

3In the 21^st century cities are forced to be smart. They are striving to be smarter than other cities in order to attract young and qualified labour, to become the favourite locations for start-ups that are developing creative software and applications. Cities provide high-speed digital infrastructure to local industries, businesses and citizens. Advised by think tanks and smart marketing agencies, cities boost their efforts to become smart cities to rank high on smart city rankings. They wish to demonstrate their innovativeness and competitiveness, and profile their global images accordingly.

4The new smart profile has replaced previous branding fashions. Instead of being sustainable, healthy or creative, many cities now believe that being smart is the future.

5Unquestionably, the future will be very much based on digital technologies. 200 years ago, is has been the railway, 100 years ago the automobile that have changed mobility patterns and guided city building. Now it is the digital technology. The ongoing rapid digitalization of the global economy has been labelled as the 5^th Industrial revolution. It will bring along a complete transformation of work and life in cities and regions. This enormous transformation has been the subject of many books. The number of books on the subject is growing annually (e.g. Komninos, 2002; Deakin, Al Waer, 2012; Deakin, 2012, 2013; Townsend, 2013; Streich, 2014; Komninos, 2014; Kunzmann, 2014; Adom-Mensah, 2016; Yigitcanlar, 2016; Landry, 2017).

6Special issues of journals have been published (Planerin, 2014; IzR, 2017) and numerous conferences are being held all over the world. The smart hype has exploded in public media, too. The smart topic has become a selling argument. Scientists and popular authors hope to benefit from covering the smart hype. While numerous research and marketing publications are describing and praising the gradual application of new technologies, and the convenience of using the i-phone over a 24 hours day, only few authors reflect on the likely negative implications for city life and urban development, for the job market or for privacy and security. The community of urban planners is just on the brink to recognize the implications. Social research on the theme has just started. Few planners have the competence to recognize the darker sides of the many enticements of the new digital age. As a rule, their professional education was based on the challenges of the past, when digital technologies had not yet influenced urban life.

7The brief essay will describe the enticements of smart technologies, and it will give some explanations what and who is driving the urban transformation process to smarter more digitalized cities. The challenges and darker sides of smart city development will then be presented briefly to identify pathways to be considered and give some directions to further research. This will be done from a planner’s perspective. A concluding section will sum up the challenges for future urban development.

1. Enticements of smart technologies

8The new smart technologies offer many enticements for cities and citizens. Daily, new applications are available for consumers and businesses, which benefit from the availability of information at any time and everywhere. And they benefit from the I-phone that has conquered public life all over the world within a decade. There are numerous fields of smart applications of ICT-technologies:

• Smart technologies improve individual mobility and orientation in cities and regions, Information on public transport, services, schedules and interruptions make the use of public transport services more convenient and encourage car drivers and commuters to park their cars at home or at park & ride stations of MRT systems. Car owners benefit from the GPS-technology and from finding a free parking space in overcrowded inner cities. Car sharing and even bike-sharing have become increasingly popular since I-phone applications made it easier to find a car or a bike and pay for the use with a click on the mobile phone. Research divisions of large automobile corporations are excited to develop the driverless car. They aim to demonstrate their innovative capacity and increase efficiency in congested inner cities. Big data storage corporations are willing supporters of visions turning driverless utopias into urban reality.
• Smart technologies are revolutionizing shopping modes (e-shopping). They make consumers independent from opening times and locations. They allow stress-affected employees and households to put their shopping lists into practice, wherever they have time to do so. The practice of e-shopping shows younger consumers benefit by comparing prizes. It enables mobility restrained older generations and handicapped seniors to order products they cannot get locally and services they need to longer enjoy life. The i-phone based order systems also offer new business opportunities for small producers in cities and peripheral locations in the countryside.
• Smart technologies promise to raise security at home (smart home), in public buses or trains, as well as on public or semi-public spaces. In times of terrorism and partially uncontrolled migration ubiquitous cameras installed at private houses or public buildings, in shopping centres and railway stations are an generally accepted, and quite successful means to identify persons. Public surveillance has become a politically accepted must in larger cities, threatened by terrorism, hooliganism and criminal gangs.
• Smart technologies are increasingly used to save energy and water by smart meters that are controlling energy consumption. Such systems enable energy and water corporations in cities to better balance supply and demand, to raise efficiency and reduce controlling staff. New energy and water technologies will be welcomed by both utility corporations and green ecologists, wishing to contribute to sustainable urban development policies.
• Smart technologies are a big hope (and also business) for the health sector. Facing the challenges of providing medical services to growing elderly population (e-medicine) health institutions are exploring the application potential of digital technology for distant health care. Maintaining general health services to patients in rural areas have become a challenge in times, where medicine is more and more specializing and medical practitioners doctors tend to reside rather in cities than in rural areas.
• Smart technologies make it easier for tourists and visitors to enjoy cities and city life by accessing (via I-phone) up-dated information. When visiting another city, a region or a museum, they can get immediate and up-to-date information on hotels and restaurants, on opening times or transport opportunities or more scholarly information on history, culture or artists. The new smart tourism technology is gradually making real or printed tourist guides superfluous. Though it will also further strengthen individualism.
• Smart technologies will facilitate access to higher education and life-long training (e-learning). There is evidence that e-learning modules are increasingly introduced in undergraduate or professional education. Their introduction is driven by ambitions of university presidents to improve the quality of teaching, reduce teaching staff, create access to education opportunities beyond costly urban institutions and respond to changing time budget of learners in times of a digitized global economy, where life-long learning had become indispensable. With growing success renowned and business oriented institutes of higher education are offering e-learning modules to students in Asia. Africa and Latin America higher institutions. Even influential NGOs, charity trusts and benign foundations have discovered the opportunities e-learning offers for opinions building and training.
• Smart technologies help singles to find a partner for a coffee, day, a night or even a whole life. More and more young and old people are benefitting from algorithms, developed by institutions to link people, who are searching for partners. Many reasons cause individuals to use such services: lack of time and opportunities, excessive mobility, multilocalism, or just curiosity.
• Smart technologies, finally, enable the public sector to inform citizens on available public services. Citizens do no more need to come in person to city hall or the regional tax office to register or to receive official certificates. Electronic public participation is very helpful to involve citizens and local businesses in participating in urban development planning and decision-making. The potential of digital participation will considerably change public management. Finally, electronic voting for parliaments at all tiers of decision-making may become an answer to dwindling voting habits.

9One more application of smart ICT technologies that are becoming increasingly popular should be mentioned. The evolving sharing community (cars and bicycles, holiday apartments and second homes, repair services and many more) is based on fast and easy communication. Smart technologies bring people together, who feel that sharing is more environmentally friendly and socially more communicative. More and more young people like to share rather tan to buy consume and dispose. Sooner or later policies launched by banks to replace real money by electronic money will be introduced. This will have considerable repercussions on employment in the banking sector and its spatial representation in cities and residential areas.

10It is obvious, new smart technologies will change the society even more than the fourth industrial revolution has done two centuries ago. Cities all over the world are eager to make use of the smart technologies and have started to label their city profiles accordingly. Being a smart city should signal their innovative power, their willingness to develop digital infrastructure locally. And it should indicate that qualified IT labour is welcome. Being a smart city is seen as a symbol of modernity, a sign that the city is prepared for future urban challenges.

2. What is driving local governments to welcome the smart city hype?

11What does cities, what does city governments drive to get on board of the smart city train? What drives local governments to invest in new digital infrastructure and smart services? What do citizens expect from city governments in times of rapid digitalization?

12Obviously, local governments are not acting in a technology free vacuum. Like enterprises and businesses they are forced to go with the technological turn, re-examine established urban management and apply new digital technologies, wherever it makes sense, and where it is welcomed and accepted by the majority of citizens. City governments are aware that many future challenges of urban development cannot be addressed by traditional approaches. The growing complexity of urban development in an increasingly insecure world requires innovative approaches to deal with future urban challenges such as mobility, resource conservation, social inclusion, affordable public services or citizen involvement.

13Citizens, in turn, gradually digitalizing their daily life and experiencing the difficulties of balancing life and work expect from local governments that public services are meeting their demands. which offer their services via internet. The transition to a different new urban economy requires new approaches of information exchange and communication. The general quest of businesses and local industries for instant access to information on public regulations and required administrative procedures for getting support and permits at any time puts additional pressure on city administrations. While local governments in small and medium-sized cities may be able to cope with the array of urban challenges they are facing, large conurbations and even mega-cities will sink into chaos unless smart technologies will support public action to deal with complexity and risk. Small cities in peripheral regions in turn assume that smart technologies will help them to provide public services even in less populated regions and to remain linked to the services of larger urban agglomerations can offer.

14Cities are advised and driven by think tanks, researchers, environmental lobby groups and environmental industries to believe that ICT technologies can make cities more sustainable; that they can do it more efficient rather than relying on citizens to change life styles and thoughtless consumption behaviour. Hence the sustainable imperative to save energy and water and rely on renewable resources is a powerful driver of smart technologies. Some cities hope to remain globally competitive by sharpening their innovative profile as a smart city. That is why developing digital infrastructure has become a key policy arena. Hoping to find strategic allies for their smart city policies cities engage in smart city networks and competitions.

15Developing smart city policies they can also hope to benefit from the many programs of international organisation, such as the European Commission or the World Bank that are supporting the digitalization of cities. Being smart has become an asset in the global competition of cities for investments and qualified labour, the so-called creative class. The driving power of large global corporations is spearheading and nurturing the global transformation process.

3. The drivers of the smart city fever?

16The gradual invasion of smart technologies into cities is driven by many players, not just a few international corporations. Researchers, architects, planners, journalists and thousands of start-ups media are equally promoting the rapid transformation to the smart city. Last, but not least, without the openness of consumers the worldwide application of digital technologies would not be so successful.

17First, obviously, this invasion is driven by business interests of international corporations (e.g. Google, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo, Uber or Facebook). They provide the technologies; dominate the data collection and storage and sell the data they have compiled and related marketing services worldwide. (e.g. Schmidt, Cohen, 2013).

18Supported in their early years by military interests of the US Defence Government they mostly origin from Silicon Valley, the cradle of smart technologies. Gradually these smart data giants, however, are joined by Chinese corporations, such as Ali Baba, an extremely successful Chinese e-shopping powerhouse, which is already exploring its expansion to Europe. Only recently German industries are exploring possibilities to create a data platform, independent from US corporations, though they are coming at least a decade too late.

19A second group of global corporations (IBM, Samsung, Hitachi, Sony, Siemens, General Electric, Cisco, Huawei or ZTE) is offering cities to develop their digital infrastructure and use the applications that smart technologies offer to cities and citizens. The have identified the smart city concept as a huge market potential and profitable business field. With voluminous public relation brochures, impressive websites and stimulating images of smart cities they promote their competence to build smart infrastructure. They primarily target Asian and Middle East countries, where the rapid urbanization and government support speeds-up the development of town expansion on virgin land. (e.g. IBM, 2012).

20Jointly with their forward and backward linkages (such as Bosch, Continental, Tesla or Magna or innovative regional enterprises) the automobile industries, of China, the US, Korea and Japan and Germany (e.g. Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, Volkswagen, Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Peugeot or Ford) are claiming that they will sell mobility and not cars in the foreseeable future. They are afraid that the traditional gasoline driven and driver-dependant car will loose to newcomers like Tesla or Google cars. They invest considerable amounts of their profits in research and development for the driverless car, one of the visions of future smart cities to guarantee unlimited mobility in compact polluted cities.

21Consumer-oriented businesses all over the world expect to benefit from the new opportunity e-shopping offers. Many businesses can only expand and survive by selling their products and services in the rapidly emerging e-shopping environment. Following the logics of the time stressed global consumer market, large corporations such as Amazon in the US or Alibaba in China are driving e-shopping to raise their corporate profits. Some corporations and smart start-ups have even started to explore the chances to deliver daily food to their urban clients. They are aware that food is a vast market in large urban agglomerations. Not surprisingly the urban logistics companies are benefitting from the changing consumer habits, too. Not surprisingly they play an influential role are among the powerful drivers of the smart city hype.

22International and national think tanks and corporate consultants (such as IBM, McKinsey, IDC, KPMG, Accenture, Frost & Sullivan or Fraunhofer) play an important role in the ongoing crusade for smart cities. They are influential advisors to local governments, offering the expertise of their research centres and their highly qualified staff to local governments, who often lack the competence to operationalize the transformation form traditional to digital infrastructure.

23International institutions with established information- and communication power, could not either abstain from jumping on the smart city train (e.g. EU, World Bank, OECD). They have initiated multiple programs to support smart city development, encourage national governments to launch smart city strategies (e.g. Denmark, 2015), promote networks among self-proclaimed smart cities, tender competitions, give awards to smart cites, and transfer knowledge from spearheading smart cities to cities lagging behind. They create international networks, link smart communities of practice, and collect and communicate best-practice to a broad spectrum of institutions and cities. Their main interest is to promote innovative regional economies with innovative approaches based on the digitalization of industries and consumer-oriented services. Even non-governmental organisations cannot resist to make use of the new technologies to strengthen their community-based bottom-up strategies for a better world.

24Renowned international and national universities (MIT, Stanford, Singapore University, Tsinghua University, ETH Zürich, ENS in Paris, TU Wien, TU Berlin, TU Munich) are intensifying their basic and applied research to advance innovations for the digital economy. They promote interdisciplinary intra-university networks and world-wide research cooperation and offer courses for educating the next generation of engineers and ICT specialists. Supported by huge public research grants and benefitting from cooperation with industries, they are well equipped to explore the potential of smart technologies for urban and regional development, host academic conferences and establish new training courses. Academic writers of the smart research community are increasingly focussing their writing and publishing on smart cities to gain credit points for their academic careers (e.g. Batty, 2013; Yigitcanlar, 2016).

25Popular life style media and journalists promote the new technologies in search for a young readership are also great supporters of the smart city transition. In times of terrorism they cover the smart field and serve up the quest for positive life style visions. They benefit from the worldwide interest in the renaissance of cities. Their editors and journalists report about convenient life in smart cities and increase their readership by praising the new technologies of the forth industrial revolution (see for example Eggers, 2013).

26More ardent drivers of smart cities are architects and urbanists, who welcome the new public interest in the modern city, where high-rise buildings and compact residential districts rely increasingly on smart technologies. With creativity and passion, and support from developers and the and industries producing smart technologies, they design urban life spaces, where sustainable requirements can only be accomplished by the installations of smart digital infrastructure.

27Last, but not least the global communities of consumers and tourists, the techno- and mobility freaks and the global gaming community are welcoming the convenience of smart technologies. They ignore the hidden dangers of being increasingly dependant on the ubiquitous availability of information and communication opportunities. They drive the gradual introduction of smart technologies in their living and working environments, like their ancestors have done, benefitting from new mobility technologies, the introduction of railways and cars.

28The above list of drivers of smart city development shows that not just the vested interests of a few Silicon-Valley corporations are promoting the smart city, but the community of innovative brains, policy makers, start-ups and millions of consumers that is driving the application of digital technology in industrial production, businesses and everyday life.

4. The darker sides of smart city development

29The introduction of new digital technologies into urban development strategies is on its way. It will bring along considerable changes for local governments and citizens alike. Three concerns are widely discussed in circles monitoring the digitalization for cities: the loss of privacy, the risks of system failures and the dependency on the power of a few globally active corporations.

30The loss of privacy has been articulated frequently. It happens by using i-phones and digital services from the local government, from energy and water corporations, from banks and shopping outlets, by commuting to and from the city. Users have been warned that the use of the new technology will provide private information to others, who use the information for profitable marketing. Experience shows, however, that the warnings are widely ignored. With a shrug of the shoulders most users sacrifice the loss of privacy to convenience and fun.

31Whenever hackers attack the Internet, as it happens from time to time, users realize the vulnerability of the system. Though action is taken to reduce the risks of system failures, the fact remains that deliberate man-made interventions or natural disasters can cause the breakdown of the local or regional digital infrastructure. Once such breakdowns occur life and work in cities is seriously affected, at least for hours if not days, with significant implications for the local economy. Once cities rely fully on digital infrastructure, they have as a rule, no plan B, when breakdowns occur. There is much space for future action.

32The dependency of cities and citizens on a few global corporation that dominate the digital market seems not to really bother cities and citizens, even though this alarming dependency is frequently articulated by critical observers. Again, convenience is given priority over. concerns. Users rather surrender to the power of Amazon, Google and Facebook, or Huawei and Alibaba and their dependent forward and backward linkages. The addiction to the new technology tends to dominate over worries and anxieties.

33These concerns have been raised in many essays and popular books. They are not subject of the following explorations into the unchartered territory of smart urban development (e.g. Maar, Rötzer, 1997; Geiselberger, Moorstedt, 2013; Keese, 2014; Howard, 2015; Morozow, 2013; Pasquale, 2016; Hostettler, 2017).

5. Digital challenges to urban development: A journey into unchartered territory

34In addition to the above general concerns, more questions arise from a planner’s perspective. Will cities require different approaches to urban development in the future? Will e-mobility change established urban transportation systems. Will urban neighbourhoods, will city centres have to be redesigned differently and adopted to e-shopping modes and e-mobility users? Will urban planning administrations have to be re-organized and re-staffed to be able to better communicate with the powerful digital industries? Will urban planning regulations have to be changed? This essay cannot give answers to these questions. The knowledge about the likely spatial implications of digital technologies in cities is still marginal. Empirical studies are just in the beginning. Speculative assumptions and armchair evidence are still dominating the discourse. Critical voices are pushed aside.

35As mentioned above, research on the multiple implications of the gradual introduction of digital infrastructure in cities is just underway. The following observations from an urban development perspective do not give answers to the questions. The points raised rather express issues that have to be explored and examined, when introducing digital infrastructure in cities and digital services to citizens. They are not arguments against their introduction and application in urban development. The digital transformation cannot be stopped.

36Technological challenges: The application of smart mobility technologies by leading automobile corporations and their techno-driven environment will change mobility patterns and logistic systems in cities. In newly built city expansions this may be an option, though in complex, already built-up city districts the introduction of the driverless car will become be a challenge for city managers. Their much promoted introduction will force cities to decide, where in the city such cars are allowed to be operated in cities, and whether cars that are not supported by digital systems will be excluded from entering inner cities. It can be assumed that city centres and access to city centres in the long run will have to be redesigned to accommodate cars that are equipped with smart new technologies.

37Obviously the technology will dominate over social or environmental concerns. When building-up, balanced digital infrastructure in a market driven environment, local governments have to face and resist the influence of the automobile corporations and the unlimited power of I&T corporations. The drivers of digital infrastructure, however, will experience that the financial means of local governments for system innovations are limited. In market led development environments, profit-seeking private investment will then offer friendly customer support and assist local governments to privatize mobility related development.

38Such privatization will increase disparities among users. Smart technologies will also force local utility corporations to invest heavily in overhauling existing systems. Again, the high costs for such investments will increase spatial disparities in the city. Digital infrastructure is prone to failures, accidents and cyber attacks. Cities and citizens will have to prepare for such incidents. Smart infrastructure networks for resource conservation (energy saving, flooding, pollution warning systems etc.) will have to be prepared for risks, once the 24 hours systems are stopped, hacked or broken.

39Economic challenges: Besides marketing research on the impacts of the digital economy on consumer behaviour, particularly concerning e-shopping modes, not much research has been done on the forthcoming structural change of the local economy. The trendy rise of start-ups in a few larger cities has been observed, creating jobs for digital nerds and creative entrepreneurs. Local government institutions and new service companies assist firms and citizens to use digital technologies, respectively to change from traditional to digital technologies.

40There is some evidence that digital technologies will support the renaissance of urban production that will take place in inner city premises of declining traditional industries or on abandoned shops on the fringe of the inner city or along arterial streets. Obviously unions raise concerns about job losses in industries, large banks and insurances, as well as in the public sector, though this is mainly done at a more general higher, not at a local level. The implications for changing qualifications on the local labour force are articulated, too. Many enterprises and local crafts complain about a shortage of labour that is qualified to handle digital technologies. All such structural changes will influence location factors and change the character of the local economy.

41Social challenges: The interest of most drivers of smart city development is to sell technology and services to cities and citizens, not to make life in cities for citizens better. As digital infrastructure in cities can only gradually be developed and made available for all citizens and visitors, not all city quarters will be simultaneously covered in the ongoing digital urban transition process. Hence unbalanced digital infrastructure development will further add social polarization in the city. Safety concerns of citizens will encourage local governments to control public spaces by smart video supervision and widely neglect privacy concern. Research has also shown that smart technologies support increasing individualism and raise the number of single households. Then the number of single households will further increase in cities. This in turn will have consequences for the local labour market as well as for the residential property market.

42Environmental challenges: By applying new digital technologies sustainable urban development can be better achieved. Smart systems und meters will help to conserve non-renewable resources, and reduce energy and water consumption. While the resource conserving application of smart technologies (energy, water) can be easily managed in new urban development schemes, their introduction in already built-up urban districts will be more difficult, more time consuming and costly. Most likely such measures will add to spatial polarisation in the city. The monitoring of environmental conditions will be made much easier by big data applications. Warning systems will help to prepare for unforeseen challenges. Smart technologies will certainly help to better sustain the urban environment, though they will as well de-motivate users to change their consumer habits.

43Challenges for urban knowledescapes: The evolution of the digital economy has already urged institutes of higher education to priorize engineering and I&T related programmes over social disciplines. Sooner or later renowned international universities will close down face-to-face undergraduate programmes and shift basic courses to the internet. They are encouraged to apply e-learning approaches to reduce cost, improve the quality of education and reach international target groups. Under financial pressure other universities will follow. International corporate universities will gain competition against public local universities and weaken local institutes of higher education, with implications for urban competitiveness and images. With the gradual evolution of e-learning in higher education the visibility of knowledge in the city will threaten to disappear. Universities and hospitals, focussing on distant learning and distant medicine practice may be tempted to change their locations, sell inner city campuses and operate from out-of-town locations. This in turn will reduce or at least weaken local government commitment to local universities and related knowledge milieus.

44Spatial challenges: The spatial consequences of smart city development are still very much unchartered territory. There are some indications that emerging smart mobility will change inner city development. In the long run, maybe a decade ahead, first innovative city government will decide to close city centres for private cars that are not equipped with smart technologies. Only smart driverless buses, taxis or car-sharing companies will have access to the inner city. This in turn will further commercialize city centres, raise property values and favour higher densities and more multi-functional high-rise buildings. Caused by the further advancement of e-shopping the functional structure of cities will change. City centres tend to turn into show-rooming spaces (consumption museums) of inter-national brand shops that are meeting consumption and entertainment requirements of citizens and visitors.

45Second class shopping streets in turn will change their characters and turn into mixed urban production, consumption and leisure spaces. Smart industrial production (industry 4.0) will require new locations in the city, which differ from traditional industrial sites. New locations will have to be multifunctional to meet the requirements of the highly qualified labour force that prefers to live nearby and use spare time for leisure or other activities and achieve better life-work balances. Some smart cities may even consider assigning web-free spaces for those, who wish to relax from the stress of the digital working environments.

46Challenges for urban governance: Digital industries, policy advisors, consultants and the media will urge Local governments drive cities to make use of the manifold applications of digital technologies for sustainable urban development. They will have to overhaul their technical infrastructure systems and provide easily accessible digital platforms for communication and information exchange. To meet expectations of citizens, local enterprises and businesses, new formats of information and communication policies will have to be introduced. More than before, local governments will have to balance top-down and bottom-up planning and decision-making processes. To do all that local governments will have to recruit new qualified staff for introducing and operating the digital turn as well as for communicating with technology providers on equal terms. Lacking budgets for the recruitment of new digitally competent administrative staff, local governments will have to invest money and time for retraining their administrations, particularly the design and control oriented staff in local planning departments. One more challenge will have to be faced by local governments. Social media and popular platforms will encourage more people to participate in urban development. The availability of new communication means and platforms to the civil society will unavoidable confront city governments with new requests for participation in urban development strategies, unless such participation is hindered or even repressed by local or national governments.

47The challenges briefly sketched above will require many empirical in-depth studies. The implications of the digital revolution for the social and economic development of cities have to be carefully monitored in order to avoid negative economic, social, cultural and spatial consequences, reduce risks of system failures as well as cushion dependency on a few global players.

6. What to do? Implications for urban governance

48Cities will have to find suitable, social balanced ways and means to deal to accommodate smart infrastructure. The rapid evolution of smart urban technologies smart city crusade will force local governments among others to:

• Develop comprehensive interdepartmental smart city development strategies, involve local institutions and groups to co-operate. and revise urban development priorities.
• Built-up new and efficient and spatially balanced digital infrastructure in an environment dominated by market forces.
• Identify and assign free zones, as experimental spatially defined laboratories for smart city development.
• Monitor local impacts of new digital technologies on urban development and invest heavily in monitoring capacity (smart city monitoring boards) and applied social and economic research.
• Retrain or employ new staff for understanding and handling the interface between traditional and digital urban development.
• Recruit qualified new staff in the public administration and Initiate permanent training of public sector staff.
• Screen and revise urban development regulations that hinder the user-friendly application of smart technologies.

49Generally all urban development dimensions will have to be re-examined to balance top-down and bottom-up uses of smart technologies to react early on possible negative implications.

Conclusion

50The gradual introduction of smart technologies in cities may raise the competitiveness of cities though economic and social polarisation will further increase. They are driven by the selling power of global ICT corporations, the passion of techno-freaks and by billions of consumers benefitting from the convenience of smart technologies in urban, though also in rural areas. The transition to smart cities is politically accepted and promoted. Priority is given to urban innovation as cities tend to favour technical solutions over socially balanced solutions.

51In times of globalization, global competition and rapid technology change, the smart city label is a good opportunity to improve the quality of life of affluent and poor citizens, maintain the competitiveness of cities, speed-up economic and urban innovations, create jobs for a new generation of university graduates, make a better use of energy, water and other resources, and protect the environment. However, the knowledge on impacts of smart technologies on urban development is still limited.

52Much empirical research is required. The spatial impacts of smart solutions on cities, such as smart mobility, smart shopping, smart logistics, smart medicine, smart education, smart participation are widely under researched. A new urban research agenda has to be formulated. Local government administrations will have to review their internal organisational structure to meet the multiple social, economic and spatial challenges of smart infrastructure development. Urban planning will have to reinvent itself.

53Otherwise digital infrastructure development will downgrade traditional urban planning approaches, turning planners into city decorators, urban lawyers, GIS freaks, data garbage managers or just moderators. Smart city development requires carefully concerted urban development approaches, a revision of planning education and new styles of urban governance. In the foreseeable future, cities will strongly depend on the technological and bargaining power of a few global ITC giants and monopolies in the US and China.

54They will convince consumers and cities to rely on and to live with smart technologies. The ongoing transition to the digital area has to be carefully monitored. Cities are the laboratories of this transition. Citizens will experience the implications for their life spaces and their daily life. Privacy concerns caused by big data collection and storage as well as the risks of dependency are sacrificed to convenience. Hopes that the digital revolution will further democratize local societies will certainly not materialize.