The term “smart cities” seems to haunt contemporary urban planning and city administrations. For years, mega-companies such as IBM, Google, and Microsoft have been experimenting with “smart neighbourhoods”, proclaiming this as the future of the city. Sensors and cameras transfer the physical world into data – traffic, pollution, climate, and (of course) human behaviour, is becoming increasingly predictable and controllable. The digital control and ‘optimisation’ of urban spaces underlies the debate on increasing individual surveillance. The right to privacy in public space needs to be renegotiated. How should developers; planners; administrations navigate this territory?