Effects of the digital transformation on the contemporary city project

The project of the contemporary city as a systematic exploration of possible futures. The resilient city to digital transformation. An open-air laboratory where to test technological innovations related to the future of urban space, integrating physical and digital layers. The value of public engagement and the mixed top-down and bottom-up nature of the project. A hybrid model for a more sustainable form of efficiency. The convergence of bits and atoms, systems and citizens that cooperate. According to many sociologists and technologists today we live in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The research aims to investigate this paradigm shift that is taking place in the contemporary city to understand how urban design is facing this digital transformation. Starting from the technological and digital innovations that are pervading the field of architecture, engineering and urban planning, this study will also try to understand how these radical changes will affect citizens’ life.

autonomous vehicles and augmented reality, of big data and Internet of things, of smart factories and cyber-physical systems.
The research wants to take note of this paradigm shift -also known as digital transformation -to study its effects on the contemporary city. The article will, therefore, try to clarify some topics about the effects that networks will have on the city of industry 4.0, the role of the designer and the approach to urban space design. The studio thus becomes an opportunity to reflect on the cities of tomorrow; an awareness of the changes taking place in the urban space design; an attempt to interpret them and understand their pragmatic implications; a research on urban transformation and an occasion to return to talking about the future, because, to use Buckminster Fuller's words, "We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims" [1].

STATE OF THE ART
According to the most enthusiastic researchers, we would already be in the midst of the most technological era of history and using an often abused formula we would live in the future. However, removing the sensationalism of technology from its rhetorical mask, this future that everyone is talking about returns an imaginary in which the keywords are 'optimization', 'simplification' and 'acceleration' of processes that already characterize our lives. As stated by the sociologist H. Rosa the late modernity in which we live would be the modernity of acceleration, not of the future. Rosa describes all this as a frenetic stasis: "Although nothing remains as it is, nothing essential changes anymore" [2]. 'Acceleration' is the right adjective to describe also the uncontrolled urbanization of the last fifty years, against which R. Koolhaas sided with the essay "What Ever Happened to Urbanism" in 1994, defining urban planning as a discipline on the edge of failure and criticizing the inability of city planners to formally translate the wild global urbanization [3]. In 2010 the historian S. Heller underlined how the first victim of the prevailing nostalgia was precisely our idea of the future, stating that in the past, the future seemed much brighter than it appears now since there was a sense of wonder that curiously no longer exists today [4].
In this condition of 'loss of future' architecture and urban planning could not remain indifferent. The economic crisis and the advent of the digital transformation have not only impacted the dynamics that regulate the stock market and the productive assets, but also those that characterize the urban planning discipline, shaking the enthusiasm and awakening the hidden  [2]. Accelerazione è l'aggettivo giusto per descrivere quell'urbanizzazione sfrenata degli ultimi cinquant'anni, contro cui nel 1994 si era schierato R. Koolhaas con il saggio "What Ever Happened to Urbanism", definendo l'urbanistica una disciplina sull'orlo del fallimento e criticando l'incapacità degli urbanisti di tradurre formalmente la dilagante urbanizzazione globale [3]. Nel 2010 lo storico Heller ha sottolineato quanto la prima vittima passion for 'the future'. If on the one hand we started to design with bottom-up processes, focused on reuse -taking the 'horizontal' and democratizing aspect of the industry 4.0 -on the other hand, there has been a growing emphasis on the concepts of Smart City and sustainable city, enhancing the technical aspects linked to well-being and sustainability, where, however, the social and cultural improvements seem to derive solely from hi-tech innovations.
Starting in the 2000s, the city, which has always been the kingdom of urban planners and sociologists, has undergone a growing interest on the part of IT giants, encouraged to invest in technological feasibility and in the expectation of conquering new markets. From then on, cities were increasingly pushed by large multinationals to become 'smart' -as if technologically advanced were necessarily synonymous with 'smart' and as if the solution to the problems of urban agglomerations were the exclusive subject of engineers and IT -through spasmodic attention to efficiency and comfort. "The Smart City has [...] the fascination suffered by urban planners for a long time: if every element of a city is designed with coherence, the whole thing can work perfectly" [5].
In this regard, Koolhaas, in a speech to the European Commission in 2014, revealed some complexities and contradictions regarding the Smart City [6].
According to the architect, urban planning has always been based on the creation of communities and on the constant effort to formally symbolize it.
But with the birth of the Smart City, public values have been progressively replaced by the private interests of the big technology companies, under what he defines ¥€$ regime: "this transfer of authority has been achieved in a clever way by calling their smart city -and by calling it smart, our city is condemned to being stupid" [7]. Furthermore, Koolhaas himself claims that the Smart City movement is today a crowded camp, which relies mostly on the rhetoric of the disaster; the effects of climate change, an ageing population and infrastructure, floods and droughts are all problems for which the Smart City always has an answer.
This thought is only a starting point to put designers in front of some not too immediate considerations. The intent is not to be one of assiduous critique and an end in itself, but a provocation to bring together the themes of politics and the city, recently grown into separate worlds. In reality, the definition of 'smart city' is not just about technological development in itself, but the ability to use the information and possibilities that new technologies offer.
"The full achievement of the digital revolution has built an immaterial space of infinite horizontality. Like a thin veil, now this new layer is laying down, the last in order of time between the successive layers that have shaped our cities over the centuries, on their physical and social structures, spreading in dell'imperante nostalgia fosse proprio la nostra idea di futuro: "In passato il futuro appariva molto più luminoso di quanto ci appare ora [...] Il futuro è diventato piatto" [4]. In questa condizione di perdita di futuro l'architettura e l'urbanistica non potevano rimanere indifferenti. La crisi economica e l'avvento della digital transformation hanno impattato sia le dinamiche che regolano il mercato azionario e gli assetti produttivi, sia quelle che caratterizzano la disciplina urbanistica, scuotendo gli entusiasmi e risvegliando la passione recondita per il futuro. Se da un lato si è iniziato a progettare con processi partecipativi incentrati sul recupero -cogliendo l'aspetto ' [5]. A questo proposito Koolhaas, in un discorso del 2014 alla Commissione Europea, ha fatto emergere alcune contraddizioni insite nella Smart City [6]. Secondo l'architetto l'urbanistica si è sempre basata sulla creazione di comunità e sullo sforzo di simbolizzarla formalmente ma, con la Smart City, i valori pubblici sono stati sostituiti dagli interessi privati delle grandi aziende tecnologiche, secondo quello che definisce '¥€$ regime': "this transfer of authority has been achieved in a clever way by calling their city smart -and by calling it smart, our city is condemned to being stupid" [7]. Inoltre, lo stesso Koolhaas  an innovative way on the most complex, structured, evolved and, at the same time, ancient product created by man", the city.   and materials flows in real time; algorithms able to analyze the massive amounts of data; actuators, digital control devices capable of reacting to data, affecting physical space. This condition of the contemporary city is often defined as 'ubiquitous computing' [9], a condition of widespread informatics.

METHODOLOGY
In Ubiquitous City physical space and virtual space converge, and data-driven processes transform the city into a test bed for the application of IoT and Big Data. If in the nineties the theory of widespread computer science had led us to think that physicality would have lost any relevance, today, as "the more we register the desire for connectivity through devices, the more we see a tangible need for concentration of people in central locations of the city, rediscovering the value of human capital and its ability to generate virtuous circles in places and rediscovered spaces " [10]. Therefore, it seems appropriate to see how in an era in which the digital sphere has completely enveloped the urban sphere, everyday life has become saturated with electronic services and digitalisation has contributed to increasing safety and well-being. "But is the success of people or technology?
Does sustainability have to be reduced to a form of government without conscious participation? " [12]. Where does the disordered city end? Where does the city which includes a hint of chaos and unexpected vitality -of which J. Jacobs spoke enthusiastically in the early 1960s and which allowed the oldest cities to resist empires, monarchies, famines and wars -ends? To give an answer it would be enough to take a walk for Songdo, or within the walls of the control room that IBM in Rio de Janeiro or by observing the management headquarters of Apple in Cupertino. If the Panopticon is a candidate to be the Without getting lost in neo-Luddites chatter it would be enough to say that if technology can certainly improve the life of the city, it is also true that it tends to make people passive and to control them. It is, therefore, necessary to clarify the priority of an active and productive city, where creativity and fairness are elevated to the level of the final objective. It could be said, as claimed by sociologist S. Sassen, that technology, for example in, has already hacked the city. But what would happen if the city were able to hack technology -"can cities hack technology?" [13]. Would be valuable if people could hack their cities?
For the sociologist Sassen the answer is, without doubt, yes. Starting from the assumption that the city is a complex but incomplete system and that behind that complexity there is the possibility of continually reinventing itself, the practice of hacking could become a valuable alternative to centralized control of the wired city. In the era of ubiquitous computing, almost everything is accessible, appropriated and subversive: the world becomes a hacker's playground. So how can the practice of 'positive hacking' be translated into urban planning? To answer, one would have to go to the beginning, starting affermare che se la tecnologia può migliorare la vita della città, è vero anche che tende a rendere passivo chi la usa. È necessario dunque fare chiarezza sulla priorità di una città attiva e produttiva, dove creatività ed equità siano elevate al rango di obiettivo finale. Si potrebbe affermare, come sostiene la sociologa S. Sassen, che la tecnologia, ad esempio a Songdo, abbia già hackerato la città. Ma cosa accadrebbe se la città fosse in grado di hackerare la tecnologia -"can cities hack technology?" [13]. Partendo dal presupposto che la città sia un sistema complesso, ma incompleto e che dietro a quella complessità si celi la possibilità di reinventarsi in

RESULTS
Today the challenge of predicting the future continues to thrill and engage, yet this "future often turns into paleo -an obsolete hypothesis that will never be realized". Is trying to predict the future a valid and productive thing? The objective "is not to correct the present (a challenging task) nor to predict the future (useless effort), but to be able to positively influence it" [15]. In this regard, is it sufficient for a city to function perfectly to be defined as smart? Is the systematic optimization of resources the most desirable result? Suddenly comes another factor: an improved city vision thanks to the contribution of citizens' bottom-up initiatives. The first to establish itself in this sense is J. Jacobs [16] [14].
Contemporary cities should be able to allow fusion between the two systems: if pure optimization soon becomes obsolete, a hybrid model can amount to a more sustainable form of efficiency. "It is the convergence of bits and atoms: systems and citizens that interact" [18].
Here we want to take the Canadian project 'Sidewalk Toronto' as an emblematic case, an excellent example to understand the context in which the designers work today, as it highlights the significance of rethinking the relationship between technology and urban planning, between engineering and architecture. Born from the partnership between Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalk Labs in order to redesign the East Waterfront of the Canadian city, the project focuses on the concept of resilience not only from an environmental but also a digital point of view, as a capacity to adapt to the changing needs of citizens, increasingly driven by new technologies. The intervention takes the opportunity of regeneration to transform the city into a sort of open-air laboratory, where to test innovations related to urban space, integrating physical levels (built, public space, mobility, utilities) and digital.
In this perspective, for example, the project acts on the "invisible level" of the utility infrastructure, designed since the start as an accessible and monitorable infrastructure, guaranteeing time and cost savings for their future "upgrade".
Just as computer and smartphone operating systems allow devices to function without inhibiting the possibility for users to develop new apps, so the digital layer should be imagined; a layer of sensors through which the city would be able to "feel" what it needs and "act" accordingly. Think of the potential usefulness of sensors that measure air quality, noise pollution, light input, microclimates; or sensors and cameras capable of monitoring the flow of vehicles, people, bicycles, objects or structural behaviour in response to seismic shocks and other atmospheric agents. Each new urban intervention presents itself as an opportunity to acquire a digital infrastructure capable of accommodating the opportunities provided by emerging technologies. Physical spaces can be designed according to the advantages offered by technology, rather than being forced to update slowly, at a high cost, later. By combining the physical and the digital as the principles at the base of the design of new urban areas, the possibility would be given to act in parallel with the technological change, to adapt to what will be the future challenges of the cities, which nobody can anticipate today.

CONCLUSIONS
Every day new applications add new accessibility tools to our devices, new technologies simplify our lives and on-demand services mitigate our desire to (re)act. We live in the era of instant gratification, of the people who stand, staring at their devices, "looking like standing stones" would sing Damon Albarn. For subjects as old as arch and stone, such as urban planning and architecture, it is not at all easy to keep up.
A prophetic Koolhaas had predicted this in 1995, a time when technologists and computer engineers were taking the place of urban planners, whose failure to react would be the trigger for the birth of cold and anonymous cities. The call to action of the Dutch architect is more relevant than ever, especially now

CONCLUSIONI
Ogni giorno nuove applicazioni aggiungono ai nostri device nuovi strumenti di accessibilità, nuove tecnologie semplificano le nostre vite e servizi on-demand attenuano la nostra voglia di (re)agire. Viviamo nell'era dell'instant gratification, delle persone che si ergono fissando i propri device, "looking like standing stones" canterebbe Damon Albarn. Per materie antiche quanto l'arco e la pietra, come urbanistica e architettura, non è per niente facile tenere il passo. Un profetico Koolhaas lo aveva predetto nel 1995, momento in cui tecnologi e ingegneri informatici stavano prendendo il posto degli urbanisti, la cui mancata reazione sarebbe stata causa scatenante della nascita di città fredde e anonime. La chiamata all'azione dell'architetto olandese è più che mai attuale, specialmente ora che le forze in gioco nella città contemporanea consentono ai cittadini di prendere parte più da vicino alla progettazione (all'hackeraggio) della città, i sistemi top-down non sono più sufficienti. Per dirla con Carlo Ratti "non può esistere smart city, senza smart citizen". Non basta che una città funzioni alla perfezione per essere definita intelligente; è cambiato il ruolo del cittadino così come quello del progettista, che deve assumere oggi un approccio più 'tattico' che 'pianificatorio'. Se nel XX Secolo ha prevalso la certezza di poter pianificare razionalmente gli spazi urbani, la ricerca sottolinea il fallimento di questa convinzione. Ed ecco che ritorna nelle riflessioni della città contemporanea un crescente bisogno di utopia; se l'utopia del Moderno costruiva scenari nella fiducia di poter disegnare il futuro, oggi la spinta proiettiva resta ancorata alla scena reale proponendo una sorta di 'utopia del reale', fondata sulla capacità di innestare idee di futuro con riguardo alle condizioni del presente. Una situazione in cui that the forces at play in the contemporary city allow citizens to take part more closely in the design (to the hacking) of the city, the top-down systems do not are more than enough. In the words of Carlo Ratti, "there can be no smart city, without smart citizens". It is not enough for a city to function perfectly to be called intelligent; the role of the citizen has changed as well as that of the designer, who must now take a more 'tactical' approach than 'planning'.
If in the 20th century the certainty of being able to rationally plan urban spaces prevailed, the research underlines the failure of this conviction. And here a growing need for utopia returns in the reflections of the contemporary city; if the utopia of the Modern built scenarios in the confidence of being able to design the future, today the projective drive remains anchored to the real scene by proposing a sort of "utopia of the real", based on the ability to graft ideas of the future with regard to the conditions of the present. A situation in which old and new, large dimensions and human dimensions, transformation and attention to the territory, modernity and conservation, reach a perfect balance.
So how to move in a revolutionary context like the current one? How can hardware, industry 4.0, work without suitable software, the city 4.0?
Technological innovation has provided us with countless increasingly smart and sustainable tools, but is the contemporary city ready to put them at the service of a new community, transforming itself into a 4.0 city?
Yes, but with conditions. That is if the citizens will understand the importance of their role as an active participant in the city project; if the designer begins to add increasingly sophisticated digital layers to increasingly accessible physical layers; if the urban planner will understand that he no longer has to design the city of the future, but the future of the city.