HIGH-TECH VENICE- technology at the service of urbanity - (Venice, 2120)

The first high-tech Cities started to be designed In the first 20 years of the 2000s. In particular they were conceived as urban archipelagos entirely built ex-novo, especially designed for the rich developing countries of the middle-east. The main characteristics of a high-tech city were the artificial intelligence and the idea of technology as the only tool to improve the life of citizens by making a more efficient city. According to these projects, as happened for instance with Masdar City by Normann Foster, the technological systems were conceived to radically cut CO2 emissions, ,meanwhile improving people mobility. The idea of high-tech City was then adopted as a potential sustainable policy by many countries all over the world investing especially in energy efficient systems. Several High-tech cities designed by archistars were then built up from scratch. But this tendency led to transform even the historical centres of many cities, converting their main identitarian spots into aseptic super-technological centres, meanwhile risking to destroy their place identity. Are high-tech Cities the real cities of the future? Is the spread of technology able to preserve the identity of a place?