Exploring the Form of a Smart City District: A Morphometric Comparison with Examples of Previous Design Models

In key moments of urban history, urban design is confronted with the emergence of new paradigmatic design models, such as the garden city and the radiant city. Recently, the Smart City seems to have gained centre stage in the public debate. However, despite its emblazoned technological features, the Smart City remains a hazy concept in the urban design domain to such an extent that almost any form can be built under the Smart City label. While this may sound libertarian and progressist, it is also concerning since different urban forms are associated with different societal outcomes. This paper aims to investigate the forms of Smart City districts through morphometric comparison. More specifically, it proposes a replicable methodology based on 18 metrics of urban form and statistical analysis to compare a Smart City district with other city areas with known design models of reference. Such a methodology is applied to three case studies on the French Riviera: Méridia, a Smart City district, Hôtel-des-Postes, a 19th-century traditional district, and Sophia Antipolis, a sprawling technopark. The results show that Méridia has a hybrid form that partly resembles Hôtel-des-Postes (higher densities, gridiron plan, and functional mix) and partly Sophia Antipolis (bulky buildings with large setbacks). However, the top–down approach used in the production of the physical space ultimately renders Méridia more similar to Sophia Antipolis than Hôtel-des-Postes. This study provides one of the first morphometric characterisations of a Smart City district, but also a replicable methodology that can further the morphological understanding of the Smart City phenomenon worldwide.