"Smart Cities for whom, for which citizens?”: Interview with Lucas Melgaço by Frank Müller

So-called “smart” solutions are changing the way we experience and talk about security in urban environments. The shifting relations between new technologies of information and security therefore deserve increased academic interests. It is in this vein that Lucas Melgaço is skeptical about the positive impact of technophile surveillance policies in cities around the globe. Despite the profound differences regarding practices and discourses of crime and security, Melgaço does outline some similarities between cities of the Global North and those of the Global South (a dichotomy whose explanatory capacity seems today, more than ever, doubtable). These, he argues, deserve taking into account the academic works of authors like Brazilian Geographer Milton Santos, whose thinking - among that of many other researchers - has been marginalized out of the “English-speaking bubble”.