Governments need to be smart about the cities of the furture

Governments must be smart to build the city of the future, write Carlo Ratti and Matthew Claudel

MAIS OUI! As every French pupil knows, the internet was invented in Paris. It was called Minitel, short for Médium interactif par numérisation d’information téléphonique, a network of almost 9m terminals that allowed people and organisations to connect to each other and exchange information in real time.

Minitel boomed during the 1980s and 1990s as it nurtured a variety of online apps that anticipated the global dot-com frenzy. It then fell into slow decline and was finally decommissioned after the “real” internet rose to global dominance.