| Abstract |
As we have seen, the smart city, being both an ideal and a process - a dual aspect that allows it to escape the language of mere urban utopias - remains full of ambiguities. It also faces a certain number of challenges that are simultaneously technological, environmental, social and cultural, and which demand to be discussed as we approach the end of this book. It is not that any of them represents an insurmountable obstacle or an asymptotic limit that cannot be crossed. Rather, they can be considered as an incitement to enrich current approaches. In particular, we need to leave in the past what is still the overly simplified quality of representations of the smart city proposed by the various stakeholders that it concerns. We cannot satisfy ourselves with one or two models of the smart city. The head-on conflict between neocybernetics-inspired management and participatory logic should not lead us to limit the range of possibilities. Instead, it is a question of extending this range in order to reveal the existence of alternatives, taking local situations into account as well as the targets that leaders and the general public set themselves. |