The term “Smart City” has been used in different contexts since the 1990s, when it was first employed in the United States to describe the use of ICT (information and communication technologies) applications in modern urban infrastructures (Gibson et al., Citation1992). Various similar concepts have appeared such as digital city, intelligent city, knowledge city, and wired city, in the attempt to specify this fuzzy concept (Albino et al., Citation2015; Camero & Alba, Citation2019; Caragliu et al., Citation2011; Cocchia, Citation2014; Patrão et al., Citation2020; Sharifi, Citation2019, Citation2020). Common across these descriptors is the presence of ICT, which is used to enhance efficiency and address city development challenges, including safety and aging populations (Akande et al., Citation2019; European Commission, Citation2021; Patrão et al., Citation2020; Sharifi, Citation2019). At some points, scholars and stakeholders started to identify and address the importance of people, as the human is the basic unit of a city (Cavada et al., Citation2014; Govada et al., Citation2016). Therefore, this wider point of view places citizens, quality of life and human value in the smart city concept, in addition to pure technology.

The concept remains a contested one, however and there is still no general agreement and standard definition of the term “smart city” (Albino et al., Citation2015; Camero & Alba, Citation2019; Caragliu et al., Citation2011; Cocchia, Citation2014; Patrão et al., Citation2020; Sharifi, Citation2019, Citation2020). The main aim of the article is to reconstitute chains of meaning in relation to the Smart City, one of the most in vogue yet ambivalent concepts in urban studies (Lai & Cole, Citation2023).