Planning in the Era of Information and Communication Technologies. Discussing the "label: Smart" in South-European cities with environmental and socio-economic challenges

In the last decades, planners have explored various approaches to sustainable urban planning and development. Scholars widely argued the limits to uncontrolled physical growth, to the exploitation of resources, and the necessity of finding alternatives. Within the general framework of sustainability, urban planners are in the search for approaches aimed at coping with current uncertainties that cities have to face, based on the deterioration of natural-socio-cultural environments and uncontrollable economic and financial flows. Notwithstanding, the rise of post-industrial urban economies has introduced Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as successful devices that are proposed…