Some of the most symbolic images of the past year have been of empty city centers. Deserted images Times Square, Covent Garden, Champs-Élysées, and Shibuya commercial district would have been impossible to capture before the lockdowns and stay-at-home orders that COVID-19 brought about. Our cities have felt the greatest impact of the pandemic and this has forced city managers to reflect on how it could have been different in order to consider what should change in the future. Now a new post-COVID urban agenda is emerging to safeguard and futureproof our cities against all kinds of threats, and at the center of this debate is our maturing smart technology landscape. Smart cities were a growing trend for the last decade or more, long before the pandemic emptied our busiest streets and squares. Sensor and surveillance infrastructure was already emerging in our most progressive cities where radiply evolving digital twins represented the push towards urban digitization. […]