Smart City — How to Create Public and Economic Value with High Technology in Urban Space

“The mosaic emerging from the smart city panorama is colorful and rich of suggestions to support both further studies and better implementation plans. It clearly emerges that smart city is a complex challenge, because it involves several dimensions: technology, citizens, public and private bodies, urban vision. Moreover it interests cities all over the world, with very deep differences each other: cultural, economic, social. Each city wants both to apply a shared smart city idea and to pursue its own specific goals. This complexity requires the development of a governance framework of smart cities, built upon a shared smart city definition, but flexible to be adapted to different and specific needs.” — Renata Paola Dameri and Camille Rosenthal-Sabroux

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This work by Renata Paola Dameri and Camille Rosenthal-Sabroux is a collection of different articles covering broad topics regarding smart and digital cities. The definition and distinction between these two concepts are extensively discussed throughout the book. Although no unified definition is used, it is understood that digital cities are more focused on the “technical side”, having the transformative use of ICT as the most important aspect. Smart Cities, on the other hand, are more focused on social and environmental aspects, not necessarily using high-tech solutions. Indeed, there are even “No Tech” Smart City Projects.

Regarding governance, different models are presented. The initial digital city approach was normally structured in a more “bottom-up” manner, with App development and use by different independent groups. However, more recent Smart City projects increasingly adopt the “Triple Helix” model, in which smart city initiatives are coordinated through the cooperation of public administration, universities and research centers, and businesses, normally through PPPs. The latest initiatives expand this model to a “Quadruple Helix”, with the citizens as the fourth member.

The dimensions of impact of the smart city are also exposed, these being smart mobility, smart environment, smart people, smart living, smart governance and smart economy. For all these, one of the most important tasks for the city to extract value out of the data. The developments in infrastructure, such as the ever-growing use of sensors, means cities now have Big Data in their hands. However, for this to become really valuable, data coming from different sources needs to be syntactically and semantically integrated — another challenge for Smart City developments.

One relevant trend worldwide that is explored by the authors as a means of fostering innovation is the adherence to the Open Data principle. Open Data focuses on making governmental data publicly and easily available online. This is seen as an efficient method for cities to increase transparency and accountability, but also more importantly to enable information and knowledge gain by all societal groups as well, since with Open Data anyone can develop applications based on public sources independently.

Lastly, valuable insights regarding the development of these initiatives can be gained. Reading the case studies, it becomes clear how much supra-national funding, specially from the EU, was responsible for setting this trend in motion. Many of the most successful smart cities became so due to active participation in the EU-Commission’s funding initiatives. The authors also see the potential drawbacks to this, because if smart-city actions are not oriented to sustainable and long-term smartness, the smart city ceases to exist as soon as external money stops coming in. Hence the importance of efficiently assessing the performance of actions and aligning them to local-government capabilities.

The book is split into 11 articles, each dealing with a different topic regarding Smart Cities, such as security, logistics, definition, performance measurement, social innovation and more.

Creators of zones and societies should look to chapter 5 for a smart city action recommender system, chapter 9 for an urban B2C fleet planning model and chapter 10 for integrated security solutions.

Policymakers and analysts can delve into chapters 1 and 6 to get a deeper understanding of the creation of public value, as well as chapter 11 to get to know the “Living Labs” concept for bringing about innovation.

Scholars and experts may read chapter 2 for a systematic literature review, chapters 3, 4 and 8 for case studies of European cities and lastly chapter 7 to get into smart cities’ performance measurement.

The book can be found here.

Written by: Francisco Litvay