Abstract

Criticism of the idea of «smart cities», enabled by Web2.0+, has gathered pace in the wake of the global ransomware attack of May 2017, which amongst its targets disabled the operation of many hospitals in the UK. Concern over the vulnerability of such critical infrastructure has also been signaled by those arguing that dependence on digital technologies for the organisation of social and economic life has now gone past the point of inflexion in North America and in many European countries. This paper considers the evolving controversy over smart cities and their security implications through a Quantitative Narrative Analysis of urban security strategies in Italy and the UK. It relates this Quantitative Narrative Analysis to broader arguments about the significance of city-regions as objects of security that cannot be sufficiently understood through reference to conventional concepts of territorial governance. How, in the twenty-first century, are public authorities making sense of the new architectures and territories of security generated by smart cities and their emergent technologies?