The Smart City: From Modern Power to Smart Power

Despite its recent emergence, the concept of smart cities today is widely spread and accepted by many countries and governments. Yet, its definition and profound meaning remain hazy. Technology and digitalism, according to the main stream of smart cities, is the ideal "smart" solution for contemporary urban ills and the means to fulfil humanity's long standing dream of the Enlightenment. But is it true that the smart city is the ideal solution for the urban crisis cities face today? The smart city is primarily capitalist, however, adopting a new urban planning paradigm. Then, how can a capitalist approach address the urban ills that are essentially the production of its system? Can this paradigm be the illness and its cure at the same time? To answer this question, we must examine the deep level of the smart city's operating mechanisms and explore its dynamics in the management of the city and its people, with a special focus on the issues of authority and power. The paper attempts to investigate the concept of power in the production mechanisms of the smart city, its transformation from the modern to the smart concept, and the impact of such a change on the urban ills produced by capitalism and the modern power. Would such a shift in the concept of power address the urban city's problems, or would it create another type of crisis and other urban issues?