Kolotouchkina, Ripoll González and Belabas argue that the smart city has intensified old exclusions while generating new digital hierarchies around access, literacy, age, ability and institutional participation. The iconic idea is that inclusion cannot be treated as a rhetorical supplement to smart-city governance; it must become a framework for assessing who is included, what digital inclusion is worth, and how inclusive governance is materially organised. The theoretical contribution lies in displacing efficiency-centred smart urbanism with a reflective model of digital justice. Methodologically, the article works as a review and framework-building exercise, synthesising literature on digital inclusion, urban governance and smart-city transitions. Its conceptual operation is reflexive inclusion: the city is examined through the exclusions produced by its own digital interfaces. The bridge to the wider field connects platform urbanism, public administration, disability studies, ageism, digital citizenship and democratic governance, insisting that smartness without inclusion reproduces urban inequality through technical form.
URBANISM MEETS ART