PlaceTech: Beyond Spaces

MIT Technology Review Italia launches its PlaceTech series with a special publication edited by Andrea Granelli — author, thinker and member of the journal’s scientific committee. This white paper highlights the top 10 articles, perspectives, case studies and technologies that are already reshaping the way we inhabit the world, offering a critical and practical roadmap for those who wish to understand and engage with these new scenarios.

For years we have been talking about PropTech — technologies applied to property, portfolios and assets. A useful, necessary approach, but one that remains fundamentally building-centric: the building is at the centre and technology serves to manage it better. PlaceTech represents a more profound evolution. The focus is no longer on the building, but on the place.

A place is not merely a physical structure. It is an identity, a memory, a community. It is the space where people, ideas and experiences come together. And from this perspective, technology does not simply digitise or streamline the asset: it serves to orchestrate experiences, flows and communities within complex environments.

One of the most interesting aspects of PlaceTech is the breadth of its definition of ‘place’. We are not just talking about offices and skyscrapers. Places are:

• Factories and construction sites that become connected and smart environments
• Care and learning spaces that are redesigned around people’s needs
• Urban districts that integrate mobility, services and sustainability
• Historical and cultural heritage enhanced through digital restoration technologies
• Natural spaces — river basins, coastlines, agricultural areas — where technology and the environment interact
• Hybrid and digital environments — from the metaverse to virtual workspaces — where the physical and digital dimensions overlap

In summary, the scope of PlaceTech is life itself: the places we live in, travel to and frequent, whether out of necessity or by choice.

Converging technologies

What makes PlaceTech such a fertile — and such a complex — field? The answer lies in convergence. It is not about a single technology, but an integrated ecosystem of intertwined solutions:

• Efficiency and sustainability: building energy management systems, IoT sensors and digital twins that enable every aspect of a space to be simulated and optimised even before it is built or renovated.
• New ways of working: platforms for space management, employee engagement and community building. The workplace is no longer just a physical space, but an experience.
• Materials and construction: new materials, Construction Site 5.0 and BIM technologies that transform the construction process into a continuous digital workflow.
• Urban mobility: not just electric or autonomous vehicles, but the entire infrastructure connecting different locations — stations, hubs and transport interchanges reimagined as living spaces.
• Cultural heritage: restoration and regeneration through digital tools that preserve memory and open up new ways of experiencing our historical heritage.
• Climate adaptation: technologies for climate risk prevention, urban resilience and the relationship between the built environment and nature.

All these technologies converge towards a single fundamental goal: to improve the design, management and enhancement of the places we frequent — and, above all, the way we experience them.

Why Italy is a PlaceTech country

There is a specific reason why PlaceTech finds particularly fertile ground in Italy: we are a country that has built its identity through places. Our cities, our villages, our landscapes are not merely backdrops — they are the result of centuries of interplay between human intervention and nature, between architecture and community, between memory and innovation.

This cultural sensibility, combined with a tradition of design and engineering excellence, puts us in a unique position to interpret PlaceTech not as a set of tools, but as a vision of the relationship between technology, space and people.