Waste management and local conflicts: a smart city needs a smarter communication strategy

Over the past few years, the notion of ‘smart city’ has increasingly circulated among policy makers and experts, becoming quite fashionable. Among the many dimensions the concept is usually related to, the work focuses the attention on the theme of ‘smart environment’, particularly discussing the social phenomenon of local controversies and conflicts in urban waste management. Moving from some of the results of an on-going research on the incinerator in the city of Turin, Italy, it is argued that plant and infrastructure settlements with a heavy ecological impact represent a highly sophisticated and diverse social phenomenon, to which old-school communication strategies, based on ‘dirigistic’ approaches, seem to have no effect or, worse, a boomerang effect. After a brief critical introduction to the main issues, a proposal for a proactive and more participatory communication strategy is presented.