Smart City and the Adaptive Reuse of Historic Buildings: Preserving Cultural Identity and Mitigating Gentrification in Urban Regeneration

The integration of smart technologies into the adaptive reuse of historic buildings has redefined the relationship between urban memory, cultural identity, and regeneration processes. In a time when cities are rapidly digitizing, tools such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), the Internet of Things (IoT), and digital heritage platforms offer new possibilities for documenting, managing, and reimagining historic environments. However, the application of these technologies is never neutral. While they present technical efficiencies and enhanced connectivity, they also risk simplifying complex histories, privileging market-driven narratives, and accelerating processes of exclusion under the guise of innovation. This thesis critically investigates how smart technologies reshape the adaptive reuse of historic sites, asking how they can be leveraged to support cultural preservation and resist the forces of gentrification that often accompany urban transformation. Adopting a qualitative research design, the study combines a critical literature review with comparative analysis of four international case studies: Battersea Power Station in London, Xintiandi in Shanghai, Msheireb Downtown in Doha, and Porto Maravilha in Rio de Janeiro. These cases illustrate how digital tools are not merely instruments of conservation, but active agents in producing selective urban memories and reshaping spatial belonging. Although smart systems enable detailed heritage visualization and real-time monitoring, their deployment frequently aligns with speculative redevelopment, rebranding historic spaces as commodities within global markets. The findings underscore that the success of adaptive reuse projects involving smart technologies hinges less on technical capability and more on governance models, cultural politics, and the inclusivity of urban decision-making processes. By repositioning smart technologies as socio-political instruments rather than neutral facilitators, this thesis contributes to a critical rethinking of heritage practices in the digital age. It argues that the future of historic urban environments will depend not simply on how well they are digitally managed, but on how deliberately cities choose to confront the contested nature of memory, representation, and spatial justice. Only through ethical, participatory frameworks that foreground diverse narratives can smart adaptive reuse move beyond spectacle to serve as a true platform for inclusive urban regeneration.