For a “Living (Lab)” Approach to Smart Cities

Thanks to the diffusion of information and communication technologies, and despite the huge margins of improvement of the operating conditions of the Web, sharing an idea can be today the starting point for the birth of either a start-up or a community of interests, able to achieve a variety of goals without the intervention of any public institution. In relation to such a ferment of successful micro-level initiatives, Territorial Living Labs are here interpreted as place-based ecosystems of co-creation of goods, services as well as new organizational and social models of smart urban life. From this interpretation, the necessity strongly emerges of a coherent and viable reference framework for a Living Lab approach to the Smart City in the field of spatial planning research. Such a framework is characterized by the recognition of a common (not unique) mode of cognition and communication of both environmental and socio-technical spheres, and by the consequent abandonment of the claim of transcendent control of traditional planning, in favour of an action immanent to a kind of pluralistic as well as inclusive contexts—that we can define frameworks in turn—of innovative self-adaptation between Man and its environment.