Towards an urban planners’ perspective on Smart City
Abstract
The concept of “Smart City”, providing a solution for making cities more efficient and sustainable, has been quite popular in recent years, encouraging reflections, ideas, researches and projects for a “smart” urban development. A smart city is generally meant as a city capable of joining “competitiveness” and “sustainability”, by integrating different dimensions of development and addressing infrastructural investments able to support economic growth as well as the quality of life of communities, a more careful management of natural resources, a greater transparency and participation to decision-making processes. Based on those assumptions, this contribution tackle the controversial subject of Smart City, starting from the review of the scientific Italian and international literature that, from the Eighties to the Nineties, has been largely focused on ICTs and their impacts on urban development. Then, the focus shifts on the large debate on smart cities that has been developing from the beginning of 2000s and on the numerous institutional initiatives up to now implemented by the European Union for building up the Smart City. Finally, the article highlights how, despite these efforts, a shared definition of the term is still missing and current approaches to the issue are still very heterogeneous; it emphasizes, on the opposite, the key-role that urban planning, grounding on a holistic approach to cities’ development, should play in coordinating and integrating urban policies addressed to building up a Smart City.
Downloads
References
Batty M., Axhausen, K.W., Giannotti F., Pozdnoukhov A., Bazzani A., Wachowicz M., Ouzounis G., and Portugali Y. (2012) Smart cities of the future, The European Physical Journal Special Topics 214, 481–518
Bell, D. (1974) The coming of post-industrial society. London, Heinemann
Beguinot, C. (1987), “Le attività di ricerca per la città cablata” in AA.VV., La città cablata - Lo stato dell’arte nella ricerca scientifica, Di.Pi.S.T. - Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II” e I.Pi.Ge.T. - C.N.R., Napoli.
Beguinot, C. (1992), “Osservare, conoscere, sperimentare” in AA.VV. Per il XXI secolo - Una enciclopedia e un progetto, Di.Pi.S.T. - Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II” e I.Pi.Ge.T. - C.N.R., Napoli.
Berry, C. R. and Glaeser, E.L. (2005), “The divergence of human capital levels across cities”, Papers in Regional Science, 84(3), 407-444.
Campbell, T. (2012), Beyond Smart City: How cities network, learn and innovate, Earthscan, NY.
Caragliu, A., Del Bo, C., Nijkamp, P. (2009), Smart cities in Europe. Series Research Memoranda 0048. VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Econometrics.
Camagni, R. Aree metropolitane e sviluppo imprenditoriale, Available at: www.ueonline.it
Cairney, T.; Speak, G. (2000), Developing a “smart City”: Understanding Information Technology Capacity and Establishing an Agenda for Change, Available at: http://trevorcairney.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/IT_Audit.pdf
Castells, M.(1996) The Information Age. Economy, Society and Culture. Vol I: The Rise of the Network Society, Cornwall, Blackwell.T.J.Ltd.
EC (2010a), Communication from the Commission Europe 2020. A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, Brussels, 3.3.2010 COM(2010) 2020 final. Available at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2010:2020:FIN:EN:PDF
EC (2010b), Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. A Digital Agenda for Europe, Brussels, 19.5.2010. COM(2010)245 final. Available at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2010:0245:FIN:EN:HTML
EC (2012), Communication from the Commission Smart Cities and Communities – European Innovation Partnership, Brussels, 10.7.2012 C(2012) 4701 final, Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/energy/technology/initiatives/doc/2012_4701_smart_cities_en.pdf
Elfkrink, W. (2012), Foreword, in Campbell, T. Beyond Smart City: How cities network, learn and innovate, Earthscan, NY.
Galderisi, A. (1995), Infrastrutture e sistema urbano: la “città a rete”, in Busi, R., Fadda, M., Padovano, G., Papa, R., eds., Le infrastrutture -fisiche e telematiche- per la città del XXI secolo, Volume XXI, Fondazione Aldo della Rocca.
Gargiulo, C (1989), “La sperimentazione progettuale sull’Area Metropolitana di Napoli: la funzione Beni Culturali”, in Beguinot, C. (ed.), La Città Cablata Un’enciclopedia, Di.Pi.S.T. - Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II” e I.Pi.Ge.T. - C.N.R., Napoli.
Gargiulo, C.; Galderisi, A. (1995), “Processi di internazionalizzazione ed evoluzione dei sistemi urbani: una lettura della struttura competitiva delle province italiane”, Atti della XVI Conferenza Italiana di Scienze Regionali, Siena, 30-31 ottobre/1 novembre, Volume Secondo, AISRE - Associazione Italiana di Scienze Regionali
Gargiulo, C.; Galderisi, A. (1998), “Advanced technology, new spatial dynamic and urban competition: a procedure for evaluating of the Italian districts’ competitive potential”, Netcom, NETworks and COMmunication Studies, Volume 12, nn.1/2/3.
Giffinger, R.; Fertner, C.; Kramar, H.; Kalasek, R.; Pichler-Milanovic, N.; Meijers E. (2007), Smart cities. Ranking of European medium-sized cities, Final Report, Centre of Regional Science, Vienna UT. Available at: http://www.smart-cities.eu/download/smart_cities_final_report.pdf
Glaeser, E.L. and Berry, C. R. (2006), “Why are smart places getting smarter?, Taubman Cente Policy Brief 2006-2, Cambridge MA: Taubman Centre.
Gibson, D.V., Kozmetsky, G., Smilor, R.W. (eds.) (1992), The Technopolis Phenomenon: Smart Cities, Fast Systems, Global Networks. Rowman & Littlefield, New York.
Graham, S. (ed) (2004), The Cybercities Reader, Routlege, London.
Holland, R.G. (2008), Will the Real Smart City Please Stand Up?, City, 12(3), 303-320.
Kanter R.M.; Litow S.S. (2009), Informed and Interconnected: A Manifesto for Smarter Cities, Working Paper 09-141, Harvard Business School, Available at: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/09-141.pdf
Komninos, N. (2002), Intelligent cities: innovation, knowledge systems and digital spaces. Spon Press, London.
Leopardi, G. (1845), Canti. La ginestra o il fiore del deserto, Le Monnier, Firenze.
Martins J. (1978) The Wired Society, Prentice-Hall, USA
Mitchell, W. J. (2004), Me++: the cyborg self and the networked city, The MIT Press, Cambridge, London
Nam T, Pardo T. A.(2009) Conceptualizing Smart City with Dimensions of Technology, People, and Institutions, proceedings of the 12th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research
Niger S. (2012), “La città del futuro: smart city, smart community, sentient city”, www.astrid-online.it,
Papa, R. (1989a) “Per un progetto-programma su Napoli città cablata” in Beguinot, C. (ed.), La Città Cablata Un’enciclopedia, Di.Pi.S.T. - Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II” e I.Pi.Ge.T. - C.N.R., Napoli.
Papa, R. (1989b), “La sperimentazione progettuale sull’Area Metropolitana di Napoli: la funzione Giustizia”, in Beguinot, C. (ed.), La Città Cablata Un’enciclopedia, Di.Pi.S.T. - Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II” e I.Pi.Ge.T. - C.N.R., Napoli.
Partridge, H. (2004), Developing a human perspective to the digital divide in the Smart City, Available at: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/1299/1/partridge.h.2.paper.pdf
Pflieger, G. (2006), De la ville aux réseaux. Dialogue avec Manuel Castells, Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes, Lausanne, pp. 191- 201, 265-266
Shapiro, J. M. (2008), ‘Smart cities: quality of life, productivity, and the growth effects of human capital’, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 88 (2): 324-335.
Siegele L. (2012) Mining the urban data, The Economist June 2nd 2012
Taewoo, N., Pardo, T. (2011), Conceptualizing Smart City with Dimensions of Technology, People, and Institutions, The Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research. Available at: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2037602
Washburn, D., Sindhu, U (2010), Helping CIOs Understand “Smart City” Initiatives, Forrester Research Inc. Available at: http://www.uwforum.org/upload/board/forrester_help_cios_smart_ city.pdf
Van Soom, E. (2009), ‘Measuring levels of supply and demand for e-services and e-government: a toolkit for cities’, Smart Cities Research Brief, N. 3 <http://www.smartcities.info/research-briefs> accessed February 25, 2009.
Copyright (c) 2014 Tema. Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish in this journal agree to the following:
1. Authors retain the rights to their work and give in to the journal the right of first publication of the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons License - Attribution that allows others to share the work indicating the authorship and the initial publication in this journal.
2. Authors can adhere to other agreements of non-exclusive license for the distribution of the published version of the work (ex. To deposit it in an institutional repository or to publish it in a monography), provided to indicate that the document was first published in this journal.
3. Authors can distribute their work online (ex. In institutional repositories or in their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges and it can increase the quotations of the published work (See The Effect of Open Access)