Smart Cities Need Smart Laws

The over-arching goal of a smart city? To increase, through technology and innovation, the quality of life of citizens who are energized by the idea of of sharing city services, and are thus transformed from consumers into prosumers. Moreover, the very idea of smart cities is linked to the principle of horizontal subsidiarity: smart initiatives arise from civil society and are not decreed by public powers.

Its very description already includes some of the legal issues raised by smart cities. For instance, the use of technology implies the centrality of issues involving the rights of citizens (think of the issue of net neutrality and the protection of confidentiality of the information shared) and requires addressing the problem of exclusion faced by those who do not have sufficient skills or resources for access to the technology in question (digital divide).

As for horizontal subsidiarity, it should be recognized the real risk that public intervention aimed at encouraging private initiative in smart city projects can result in distorsion of competition, e.g. in the provision of public goods that are rivals but whose use is crucial to the success of smart initiatives.

Also, the sharing of city spaces and resources often inevitably leads to tensions with spatially contiguous properties: this was the case with so-called White Nights of city shopping, in which the use of public spaces by non-residents sometimes resulted in nighttime nuisance to residents.

The smart city, to the extent that it is aimed at the overriding goal (the inclusion of smart citizens through sharing), carries the risk of pursuing the inclusion only of those who already buy into the concept, simultaneously generating the exclusion of those who do not embrace the same paradigm. Those who are not "smart" and, worse, are recognized as such by others, and do not adopt the technology behind the sharing economy, are in danger of remaining closed out of the tech-savvy community which is currently becoming a generalized model for city development.

In these cases, the law can help, recalling the existence of principles and institutions such as liberty, property, the need to ensure sustainable development (one that is not unreasonably biased in favor of special interests), in addition to the importance that local government should accord to ensure that the public interest is really served in the interest of all. Lastly, given that the smart city is not a value in itself but a means to improve the quality of life of citizens, legal theory can provide a conceptual backing and legal framework to the identification of quality of life as a legally valid claim.