Smart Cities for an Intelligent Way of Meeting Social Needs

New technologies provide instruments to modernize public action especially from the perspective of Smart Cities, and the future of Administrative Law will likely start from and among the cities. The city is essentially identified as a legal order entrusted with the management and regulation of different flows. Since, traditionally, the concept of city is used to describe something that is opposite to countryside, there are municipalities in the countryside and municipalities in the city, but only the latter are cities in the strictest sense. One of the most interesting aspects of the development of Smart Cities is related to the use of technology in city government, from urban planning and citizen participation to the way public services are delivered. The future of administrative law will be affected by the future of smart cities and their challenges for the years to come. For this reason, it is the right time to delve deeper into the European context in order to understand whether the cities might become really constitutive elements of the European Union and whether networks and advanced forms of cooperation among European Smart Cities might have a crucial role in the EU integration process. The city becomes a relationship made of networks, transports, fluxes and the overcoming of distances linked to the countryside for territorial continuity and with other big cities for integration of services and activities.