Everything seems to indicate that the fourth economy, the economy of cities – the one which will eventually follow the agricultural era, the industrial period and the digital age – will raise questions surrounding human life, focusing on quality rather than quantity and we will stop believing that just because we are technically able to do something, means we necessarily should!

Everything seems to indicate that this fourth economy will not arise painlessly, without sacrifice or without transformations. The most important thing lies in giving up social constructionism which sees man as the product of his available technology and rights. Take geography out of the equation, forget about history, ignore the environment, culture and language, give a group of humans the systems and resources that will ensure their survival and you will get a town. Maybe. A smart town? Most likely. A society? Certainly not, what an idea! In fact, we already know full well: society doesn’t exist!

If you have a problem with the city, if you think you have a problem with society, see a shrink! There is no collective issue that cannot be turned into individual guilt! There is no social question that a solid network of systems cannot answer! Since there is no society, there is no city either, all there is the forced compact coexistence of isolated individuals – connected, yet alone. There will never be a city again, since cities used to be physical meeting grounds, places of forced intimacy between thousands of souls, now that their constant connection and their fascination for digital screens separate them so intensely.

And everything seems to indicate that the fourth economy will be violently at odds with some of our most hammered in and commonly accepted truths, some of the most widely believed ideas, a few of the highest erudite MBAs that will have served to spread confusion and cynicism while wasting energy resources throughout two or three decades. Among them will be misconceptions wielded by managerial literature, the compulsive need to rely on digital technology, the dogmas of systemic individualism and its programed liberations.

When the French Council of State, in February 2018, published a memo advising they adapt France’s laws and society to digital technology, we all understood that “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” – and that the Council of State is keeping up with current trends, in this case, insignificance. And not only that but also the idea that intelligence lies in systems and their applications, that a society is the sum of the people within it, or that a city is smart because its people are smart. The magic of cities – and their mystery – is that it takes a bit of everything for one to succeed, and that a city eventually eludes the plans, programs and systems that are made for it. Somewhere, somehow, cities are free.

Living, playing, moving, meeting are central to these separations, these gaps and this invention.

Cities have these vital functions in spades and even claim to hold more than that, meet, play, self-actualize, for example. Cities are icons of modernism, they stand as the dreams of everyone who felt left out, the people forgotten by the government and modernism’s great machine. They are a liberation to all those still living in villages, with churches and cobbled streets. They are the lead blanket of judgmental gazes of all against all. Cities are the epicenters for the reinvention of knowledge and all things common, of the will to live for the century to come.

Cities as self-designed mirrors of a modernism that does not resemble what was designed, does not respond to the demands of what its generous donators expected it to be – as a factory of the client, the crucible of people above ground, as organization of consent, obedience and shock at how much was promised.

Claude Rochet has dedicated a new volume to explaining what a smart city should and should not be. Nourished by various experiences, of projects and conferences that took him from Siberia to Namibia and from Casa Blanca in Mexico to Casablanca in Morocco, this book should be read by anyone with questions surrounding the city of tomorrow, on their living conditions, and who want to do something – and not just suffer in silence. It falls within a growing trend that refuses technical determinism, and intends to save the city from functionalism and constructivism.

It participates in the wholesome activity of de-radicalizing modernism, a new kind of fundamentalism, one that claims far more victims than any other, in the name of rampant progress.

What Claude Rochet writes must be read, meditated upon and applied by anyone confronted with questions about cities, space and territory. His first message is an invitation to come back to reality. A city is first and foremost a history and a geographical territory, and second, a system of sub-systems, an assembly of functions, a relayed network. It is an invitation to territorial intelligence, the delicate and profound fruit of knowledge of the reasons of human settlement, of local singularities, of collective preferences, of age-old teachings and of invisible continuous adaptations.

How recklessly our city-makers neglect, move or destroy techniques and methods with centuries’ worth of experience behind them! Cities have reasons that go beyond financial considerations, means of communication, or even political determination. Rediscovering these often forgotten reasons, analyzing them, weighing their relevance and permanence, is often a way for urban planners and developers alike to make the right choices and select the appropriate tone.

A city is also an asset. Granted, but what kind? A material asset made of infrastructures and buildings, systems of connected networks and telecommunications count far less than the immaterial aspect made of collective intelligence, accumulated adaptations, and also rules of life, social practices, morals and traditions. Elements inherent to urbanism, which dictate that within a few kilometers, two Italian, Chinese or French cities will have different accents, perfumes, colors, all serving to create the surprise, the discovery, the intimacy of a city, elude all calculations, management models and functional systems; yet it is much more and much better, making cities unique and incomparable. And don’t only think of Florence or Pisa, Nice and Marseilles, think Tucson and Albuquerque, Puebla or Oaxaca, Xiamen or Wuhan!

The evidence that is outlined by Claude Rochet is that there is no point to a smart city; the point is to make its inhabitants smarter. Intelligent, meaning closer to their territory and to life; more open to the world and what matters to the world; more attentive to what cannot be bought or sold, to these minuscule and delicious singularities, that make the whole difference between one city and another, and make the flavor and the happiness of the “here”, the “now” and the inter-self. This is because urban intelligence is also this sense of the limits which distinguishes, separates and abandons – conversely to the missteps of open societies, multicultural societies and above ground cities. The idiocy of those selling attractiveness, measures of creative classes, indicators of ethnic, sexual and cultural diversity only to subsequently admit they were recreating ghettos and replacing all old determinations by another, more modern one: money, should be cause for reflection among our representatives that are so often led to sacrifice to the myth of attractiveness and deliver territories to bounty hunters and subsidy-seeking drifters!

A city is a place of life. A place where women and men live and feel alive. They are its narrators, the city is their life. Not the search for investment capital, for the best techniques available or information system designers! Claude Rochet provides a number of examples of these perfect plans, of these impeccable programs, which only lack one thing: life, people and everything we call character, uniqueness, flesh and sentiment.

It is the most common and costly of mistakes; ignoring what makes a city outside of any plans, programs or invested capital. It is a question of size, no doubt. However, it is also a question of urbanism. Most importantly, however, it is a question of territorial intelligence, of respect for history, identity, morals and walks of life. Furthermore, unpredictability, surprise, free spaces, misappropriations and misuse. A city for living, without boredom. Therefore, perfect abstraction, appropriately executed contracts and flawless systems.

A city is freedom. How many of us have dreamt of the big city as a way of escaping the boredom of the countryside, the “what will people think?”, the conformity forced by the neighborhood, the street, the neighbors? Cities ensure anonymity, no doubt. They ensure one gets lost in every sense of the word. They are also places that multiply interactions, they ensure no one can remain alone unless they choose to. Cities are places where solitude is a choice. Illusion or reality? At the time when the UK is appointing a Minister for loneliness, to fight modernism’s first pathology, it is worth asking the question. Do cities have the solutions to the problems caused by cities?

Here, we are pitting city against city. City of encounters, of possibilities, unpredictability, surprises, against the city of plans, programs and systems. In sum, the city used by people as opposed to the city as a service, the lived in city against all the systems that make a city a city. No, a city is not a business just like any other, a brand like any other and a product like any other.

And this is what we call living, inhabiting, getting around, working, etc. in a complicit city, a city that is friendly and caring. Far from the systems of systems and their totalitarian grip, far from the city created by the like of Google, Amazon or any other current manifestation of the privatization of all common goods and the liquidation of all that made life easy and good, hence it is necessary to integrate cities and their surrounding territories – such as fields, deserts, forests, without which they would not be cities. Thus, there is a need to conduct a study on real diversity which arises from the internal unity of a population, which makes a city a community, entirely like no other. And thus, lastly, the need for a new humanist approach to building cities and thinking about them – humanism such as modesty, respect, care of knowledge and interests before it, and which remains out of reach of the manipulators of reality, identity, pride and bond.

Hervé JUVIN