(Smart?) Cities and Their Invisible Walls

Since the 19th century, investments of industrial surpluses from modern empires in infrastructure—such as railroads and ports in Africa and Latin America—served to entrench an extractivist structure, which disrupted and impeded the independent development of economies, societies, and their cultures. The same logic played out in the urban planning of cities within those same empires.

Robert Moses didn’t have to declare war on New York’s poor. All he had to do was design a highway. The Cross Bronx Expressway cut through working-class neighborhoods and transformed entire communities. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, following the 1921 bombing, the thriving Black neighborhood was split in two by a highway, as if salt had been poured on the wound. In Detroit, I-375 cut through one of the city’s African American hubs. Examples abound: New Orleans, Miami, Nashville, Syracuse, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Minnesota, North Carolina… In Buenos Aires, during the military dictatorship, highways also carved their way through poor neighborhoods, displacing residents due to the geography of money. Not to mention the examples of apartheid in South Africa and Palestine.

Words are the first wall. No one ever speaks of destruction. They speak of traffic flow, modernization, efficiency, progress, investment. Other invisible walls hide behind infrastructure designs or social policies. A bench with a fixed armrest in the middle prevents anyone from sleeping on it without the need to evict them. A rent that rises until it becomes unaffordable can produce the same result as an eviction. A neighborhood can undergo a complete change in its residents without anyone having formally approved the expulsion of its “undesirable” inhabitants.

Gentrification has this advantage for those who manage it: it requires no soldiers. Price does the work, and afterward we call it progress, development, and the right to private property—a right that, though sacred, never applies to the poor. It serves to justify a highway, a skyscraper, a port, a gated community, or a new city. The most obvious question is never asked: development and progress for whom?

Now the walls are no longer made of bricks and concrete, but of actions, algorithms, data, access systems, and forms of consumption. +Colonia, in Uruguay, appears in this new landscape with the words that today almost inevitably accompany any major real estate project: innovation, sustainability, technology, connectivity, community.

For much of history, the nomad—the poor immigrant—was someone who had to be controlled or expelled. Now they have become a desirable category if they arrive with investments and new utopias. The old gated communities had a quality that today seems almost naive: they marked the boundary. There was a gate, a guardhouse, and someone who decided who could enter. In the new smart cities, the boundary is less visible. No one has to tell you that you don’t belong in the neighborhood. It’s enough that the cost of living there, the available services, and the economic logic of the place render such a prohibition unnecessary.

Colonia del Sacramento began as a colonial enclave amid a dispute between empires. Centuries later, the possibility of another kind of enclave has emerged—one now associated with international capital, technology, and new forms of slavery. We no longer speak of conquest, but of innovation.

The language has changed. The relationship with the territory, not so much. Just as in colonial times or during imperial urban planning, the problem of determining what will happen to those who already live there has not changed either. Because no smart city functions without workers who are considerably less intelligent, according to the capitalist and supremacist mindset of its developers. Someone has to clean, cook, repair, drive, build, and monitor, while entrepreneurs “create jobs and well-being” from the beach, selling this new segregation as “wealth creation”—just as slaveholders did in the days of slavery. Until (1) someone is no longer (2) necessary and becomes (3) the threat.

Technology changes the landscape, but not the system of exploitation. On the contrary, history shows that it tends to radicalize it: new inventions are quickly hijacked by the privatization efforts of those who can create nothing but the accumulation of capital—an excess they then reinvest to reinforce the golden chain.

As if this weren’t enough fodder for debate (a debate that the colonial governments in power rush to avoid in their erotic urgency), no serious consideration is given to the natural resources and environmental impact that this “progress” for the few will exact as a toll on the people. A city may have solar panels, green spaces, energy-efficient buildings, and smart management systems, but no technology can make public what has been privatized.

The final blow comes from the governments in power, which promote and justify the accumulation of capital and the rights derived from this new “great opportunity for development.” The government starts by keeping the public in the dark about a project with high social and ecological impact, and then defends itself by declaring that the project won’t cost the public treasury a single dollar, since it will be financed with private capital.

The same old trick. A major investor appears with money from other shareholders. Then the investor contributes less than promised, or the project requires more. The government will cover the rest because this is yet another “too big to fail” case. Not to mention the infrastructure and resources that were, are, and will be paid for by the state. Once the new reality is established, the “savior” company raises its demands, since it has a captive workforce and a region under its control. Thus, it will continue with further privatizations of public capital and direct interference in the state, stemming from its enormous gravitational pull. They seize scarce resources in their countries of origin—such as fresh water, low-tax land, banana-republic-style legislation—and exploit the colonized people’s faith that new technology in the hands of a secretive sect will make them more developed and independent. As if that were not enough, the ideological and virtual ecosystem remains in the hands of this sect of corrupters which, as we have already analyzed elsewhere, is rooted in a perverse, supremacist, and imperialist ideology.

But cities are not inevitable machines. An avenue can destroy a neighborhood or, with different planning, become a connection between communities. An urban scar can remain bleeding for generations or be transformed into a park or a memorial. A neighborhood can be designed to attract capital or to ensure that those who already live there can continue to do so with a better quality of life and a stronger sense of belonging and justice.

It is also possible to imagine cities where basic services are not mere commodities for the benefit of a few; where decent, healthy housing does not depend on residents’ income; and where citizens have more than just a non-binding say in the transformation of their own urban space.

There are bridges that connect two banks and avenues that bring two neighborhoods closer together, but there are also bridges and avenues that divide. The difference lies in who decided to build them, who benefited, and who had to suffer through their construction.

As always, the most oppressive walls are those that no one recognizes as walls anymore.

Jorge Majfud, September 2026.