SMART CITIES AND ACCESSIBILITY: THE NEED TO OVERCOME NEW FORMS OF DISCRIMINATION

Abstract

The Smart City concept has gained impulse in recent years. It is inevitable that the technological revolution that broke into the lives of citizens in the last decades of the last century was translated into urban space at some point. Thus it has been, the new century begins to integrate the new technologies in the control of the city that entails deep structural changes as far as the relationship between individuals and public political powers is concerned. The possibility of interacting with services and being active agents of the proper functioning of public powers has opened the doors to a new scenario of public-private dialogue. But the cities had not solved, much less all their problems previously, the high concentration of the population in the cities, the depopulation of the countryside, the slums, pollution, traffic and CO2 emissions, etc.
Among these problems, it is worth highlighting the difficulties that people with disabilities have to integrate into certain urban spaces. This problem can be amplified by the introduction of new technologies that directly expel a part of the population from the march of the world and from access to products, goods and services.