On Monday, May 11, in Bologna, during the discussion on “The City of Women. Spaces, Services, and Work for a New Idea of Citizenship,” the event dedicated to Goal 5 within the ASVIS Sustainable Development Festival 2026, I brought up a reflection that I consider increasingly central: digital is not just a technical tool. It can become a true urban listening infrastructure.
But above all, it can choose which side to take: widen gaps or help reduce them.
This has also been one of the challenges at the heart of Donne 4.0’s work for years: using digital as a lever to bridge the gender gap, not to widen it.
For decades, cities have been designed primarily for linear and standardized life models. But real life is made up of complex journeys, care times, fragility, and daily needs that are often invisible in traditional planning.
Digital civic technologies and participatory platforms, on which the Territories and Digital Communities Group of the University of Turin also works, can help us:
• involve people more in decision-making processes, even those with less time or less accustomed to participating, such as women;
• valorize local and everyday knowledge that is too often ignored, such as that of women;
• build more transparent and shared representations of the city;
• dynamically update data and needs without starting from scratch each time.
This is where the concept of a digital common good emerges: a space capable of bringing together administrations, technicians, associations, and citizens to build more participatory and informed urban planning.
A significant example is that of female toponymy.
Even using AI tools, it is possible to map names dedicated to women, revealing not only data, but above all, absences, imbalances, and collective memory. Because cities speak to those they choose to make visible.
The real challenge is not having “smarter” cities. It is having cities more capable of listening.
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