For years we were sold a fantasy of bright screens and self-driving cars. We were told that technology would solve the traffic chaos and that data would set us free. However, reality showed another side. The real urban challenge of this decade lies not in how many sensors we install in traffic lights, but in how we manage to bring these advances closer together instead of isolating us in digital bubbles of efficient solitude.
The technocratic promise of yesterday
By: Gabriel E. Levy B.
A little over a decade ago, the prevailing view of the future of metropolises focused almost exclusively on hardware. Large technology corporations presented immaculate models where everything worked like a Swiss watch. The idea was simple and seductive: if we could measure everything, we could optimize everything.
Cameras were installed on every corner and the pavements were filled with sensors. The city began to be treated as if it were a giant computer that needed an operating system free of errors.
Back then, success was measured by the speed of data and the fluidity of vehicular traffic.
No one asked where the pedestrian was in that equation. It was assumed that an efficient city was, by default, a happy city.
The urban planners of that time prioritized flow over the room. They designed avenues for cars to pass quickly, not for people to stop to talk.
The model, imported from business management, sought to eliminate friction.
It was thought that urban chaos, that natural disorder of street markets and crowded squares, was a mistake to be corrected.
Money was invested in control centers that looked like something out of science fiction movies, with walls full of monitors monitoring the pulse of the city in real time.
But something went wrong in that mathematical calculation. By optimizing the space for the machine, the environment was dehumanized.
Technology fulfilled its promise of efficiency, but left a void in the vital experience of inhabiting public space.
The city became smart, yes, but it also became cold. That approach forgot that a city is not an engineering problem to be solved, but a living organism composed of human stories that need to rub against each other in order to exist.
When efficiency cools the streets
Today we are faced with a different and more complex scenario. Technology is no longer a novelty, but the air we breathe.
We have apps for everything: ordering food, transportation, appointments, and entertainment. We no longer need to leave home to meet our basic needs.
This phenomenon radically transformed urban dynamics.
The streets, once the scene of chance encounters, run the risk of becoming simple logistical corridors for delivery drivers. Digital convenience brought with it a silent side effect: social isolation.
Sociologist Saskia Sassen, an authoritative voice in the study of the global city, warned of this danger. Sassen noted that the obsession with technology can “deurbanize” the city. In his view, if technology is limited to being a cloak imposed from above, it kills the city’s ability to “speak” and respond to its inhabitants.
A real city is incomplete and complex, and it is in that complexity that its vitality lies.
The current context shows us urban centers that emptied after the pandemic and that are struggling to find a new identity.
Remote work, while bringing flexibility, eliminated millions of daily interactions. That morning coffee with your partner or the chat in the elevator disappeared for many.
We now understand that the congestion was not just from cars. There was a necessary human congestion, a rubbing of bodies and glances that wove social trust. By eliminating the need to move, we also eliminate the possibility of being surprised.
Cities face the challenge of using technology to bring people back into public space.
It is not a matter of shutting down the servers, but of changing their purpose. The question is no longer how do we move cars faster, but how do we make it worthwhile to get out on the street. We need powerful reasons to abandon the comfort of our screens and go back to looking into each other’s eyes in a square.
The paradox of connected loneliness
This is where the real crux of the problem lies. We live in the era of digital hyperconnection and, simultaneously, in the era of physical disconnection. The smart city, in its eagerness to make everything easy and frictionless, eliminated the obstacles that paradoxically united us.
Richard Sennett, a renowned sociologist and urban planner, addressed this question with lucidity. Sennett argued that the prescriptive “smart city” risks being a “closed city.” For him, friction and resistance are necessary. When everything is pre-programmed and optimized, the citizen becomes a passive consumer of services, losing his political and social agency.
Sennett proposed the idea of the “open city,” a place that enables evolution and change, where technology facilitates interaction rather than replacing it.
If the algorithm decides where I walk and what I see, I lose the ability to discover what is different. Surprise is essential for empathy. If I only see what I like and what is efficient for me, I never face the reality of the other.
The problematizing axis is that we design cities to avoid conflict and delay. But democracy and community take time. They require stopping, negotiating space on the sidewalk, yielding the right-of-way, listening to the noise of life. A frictionless city is a barren city.
Technology should be used to manage density, not eliminate it. The challenge is titanic because it fights against our own laziness.
It’s much easier to order dinner through an app than it is to go to the market. It’s easier to watch a series than to go to the neighborhood theater. The smart city of this decade must fight against this inertia.
We must ask ourselves whether we want cities that function as vending machines or cities that function as public forums.
Economic efficiency does not always translate into social welfare. In fact, they are often opposites. A park may not be “productive” in terms of data or money, but it is indispensable for collective mental health.
Technology should be the invisible scaffold that sustains these experiences, not the wall that separates us from them.
Urban mirrors where we can look at ourselves
To understand how this challenge materializes, it is enough to look at some specific cases around the world. There are examples where technology and urbanism took opposite directions, offering valuable lessons about what we should and should not do.
An emblematic case of what happens when technology is prioritized over life is Songdo, in South Korea.
It was built from the ground up with the promise of being the smartest city in the world. All systems are integrated, rubbish is pneumatically vacuumed from the kitchens and traffic lights are adapted to traffic in real time.
However, for years it felt like a ghost town. It lacked the soul, the vital disorder of the traditional neighborhoods. Critics pointed out that it was designed for efficiency, but forgot about human scale. It’s a reminder that technology alone doesn’t create community.
At the other end of the spectrum we find the strategy of the “Superblocks” in Barcelona.
Although it is not a purely technological project, it uses the analysis of mobility data to reorganize traffic.
The idea was to close the passage of vehicles in groups of nine blocks, diverting traffic to the perimeter streets. The interior was freed up for pedestrians, playground equipment and vegetation.
Here, technology served to reclaim space, not to automate it. The sensors measure air quality and noise, demonstrating how life improves when the car reverses.
People went out again, children returned to play in the street and neighbors regained the space to talk. It was a use of urban intelligence applied to social welfare and not only to logistics.
Another interesting example arises in Medellín.
The city implemented integrated transportation systems such as the Metrocable, which connected marginalized areas with the center.
But he did not limit himself to putting cable cars.
He accompanied the infrastructure with parks, libraries and cultural centers in the stations. Transportation technology was the excuse to bring state presence and meeting spaces.
These cases show that success lies in hybridization.
Paris, with its proposal of the 15-minute city, also points to this. Look for all essential services to be within walking or biking distance.
Technology helps manage that decentralization, enabling remote work and local service management, but the ultimate goal is physical proximity.
The contrast between the coldness of Songdo and the vitality recovered in Barcelona or Medellín marks the route for us.
The city does not need to be smarter in the sense of having more chips; it needs to be wiser in how it uses those resources to foster human encounter.
In conclusion, technology has transformed our cities, but we run the risk of building digital golden cages if we prioritize efficiency over coexistence.
Authors such as Sassen and Sennett alerted us to the need to maintain complexity and openness in urban design.
The challenge for the rest of the decade is clear: to use digital tools to tear down walls, not to build them.
We must move from the obsession with vehicle traffic to the passion for the traffic of ideas and affections. A truly smart city is one where technology is invisible and what shines is the quality of human relationships in its streets.
References
Sassen, S. (2013). The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton University Press.
Sennett, R. (2018). Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
