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Extrait : "When I interviewed the technology writer Evgeny Morozov in October, he warned of cities becoming too dependent on private companies. "The culmination of the smart city is a privatised city," he said. "A city in which you have to pay for previously free services." Morozov's fear about public subsidies being used for private innovation is well illustrated in Assen, a city of 70,000 people in the north of the country. Assen built a fibre-optic network for super-fast internet in 2011, to which it connected 200 sensors that measure, among other things, the flow of cars. There was an experiment to steer people around traffic jams, even though traffic in the city is relatively light. The city also connected its traffic lights, parking garages and parking signs to this grid. The cost of €46m was split between Brussels, the national government, the province and the municipality. Companies such as the car navigation firm TomTom have used the sensor network to test new services. The project, called Sensor City, filed for bankruptcy a year ago. Now the publicly funded fibre-optic network, sensors and all, will be sold to a still-unidentified private company. The municipality will have to strike a deal with the new owner about the use of its public traffic lights and parking signs."