Journal of Communication and Languages 48
When speaking about the cities of the future, one assumes recognizing the challenges that the urban space already present. The reasons are manifold and inescapable. See how information and communication technologies have radically transformed the way cities are (re) projected, recognized, and appropriate. Nowadays, amidst several traces there is the precariousness of work, the unsustainability of the social state, the increase of migratory flows and social mobilizations, and new forms of conflict which are being intensified. And, in an even more global way, the sustainability of the planet's natural environment is destabilized.
The city, a space where multiple territories coexist and intertwine, now leads as never before to a growing ambiguity between the public and private realms, between the real and the virtual. But it is also at this moment, with the earth woven in the meshes of cyberspace, all of it scanned and mapped, that one discovers the reticular nature of space. However, discovering the network is the same as understanding the world in its finitude and impossibility of expansion. Even "cloud" storage involves servers, and servers are on the ground. Undoubtedly, this is the great anxiety of the twenty-first century − the limit of extension and exploration at a time when the world population already exceeds 7 billion people. The Smart City movement seems to be born to manage the urban space in the face of such a challenge.
The next issue of the Journal of Communication and Languages aims to bring together a transversal set of discourses and ideas, and to converging them in a debate where the challenges to the future of cities and the potentialities of the cities of the future can occur. There is a certain sense of urgency, especially insistent in this matter since it involves the whole Earth. Smart City should therefore be taken as a politically oriented program and not merely as a cosmetic.
Thematic Areas:
- Sustainable systems and development
- Governmentality and territorial management
- Public space, media and social movements
- Cities of the future in literature and cinema
- Contemporary culture and technologies