DIGITAL CITY: CHALLENGES AND PERSPECTIVES IN THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Abstract

This article is an attempt to rethink established views on digital cities, offering a new philosophical perspective on their complex nature. The authors propose alternative models for the development of urban space, based on the principles of technodemocracy and inclusivity, and develop innovative approaches to understanding urban space in the digital age. The article provides an analysis of the conceptual metamorphoses of urban discourse in the context of the digital mediatization of the sociocultural landscape. It explores the shift in the semantic fields of the concepts «smart city» and «digital city» through the lens of a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, which allows for the deconstruction of dominant narratives of technological determinism. The article articulates a conceptual dichotomy between «cities with technologies» and «cities for technologies», which functions as an epistemological matrix for understanding the ambivalence of digital urban space as both a repressive and emancipatory topos. The ontological status of the digital city is examined as a palimpsest of heterogeneous semiotic practices and modes of signification, opposing interpretations of the city as a network of interconnected sensory nodes. The conceptual metaphor of the «labyrinth-network» is critically analyzed, which explicates the dialectical tension between the centripetal architectonics of the panoptic «smart city» and the rhizomatic structure of the «cognitive city». The article also explores the role of artificial intelligence in the transformation of urban space and how this technology can alter our understanding of urban subjectivity. The authors argue for the necessity of further deconstruction of the narratives of technocratic urbanism and the formation of alternative models for the development of urban space, based on the principles of technodemocracy, inclusivity, and epistemic pluralism. The article contributes to the development of theoretical conceptualizations of the digital city, offering an innovative interpretive framework for understanding the dialectical interaction between technological artifacts and social practices in the context of an urban chronotope that is in a state of permanent becoming.