Abstract
Our purpose is to identify the relevance of participative governance in urban areas characterized by smart cities projects, especially those implementing Living Labs initiatives as real-life settings to develop services innovation and enhance engagement of all urban stakeholders. A research on the three top smart cities in Europe – i.e. Amsterdam, Barcelona and Helsinki – is proposed through a content analysis with NVivo on the offi cial documents issued by the project partners (2012-2015) to investigate their Living Lab initiatives. The results show the increasing usefulness of Living Labs for the development of more inclusive smart cities projects in which public and private actors, and people, collaborate in innovation processes and governance for the co-creation of new services, underlining the importance of the open and ecosystem-oriented approach for smart cities.
Highlights
The attention paid by European Union (EU) is witnessed even by the growing number of smart cities projects; this phenomenon is related to the increasing urbanization and the subsequent demand for innovation in everyday activities that can be fulfilled with the development of enabling technologies – included in the paradigm of ‘Internet of Things’ – allowing people to participate in real-life contexts for a better quality of life
Widespread collaborations took place among inhabitants, local businesses, research centers and local agencies regarding environmental issues; Amsterdam was involved in European Network of Living Labs (ENOLL) to benefit from resource integration with actors dealing with smart projects in Europe
Governance can be seen as linked to the activities in Living Labs (LLs), as people’s involvement, engagement, and contributions are all supportive elements towards the expected results (Magnusson, 2003)
Summary
European Commission is encouraging the development of smart cities since 2011, through funding and partnerships; at the end of 2015, smart cities have been defined as one of the priorities in the funding scheme of Horizon2020.The attention paid by European Union (EU) is witnessed even by the growing number of smart cities projects; this phenomenon is related to the increasing urbanization and the subsequent demand for innovation in everyday activities that can be fulfilled with the development of enabling technologies – included in the paradigm of ‘Internet of Things’ – allowing people to participate in real-life contexts for a better quality of life.Our focus is on the involvement of stakeholders through user-driven innovation (Almirall and Wareham, 2008), since stakeholders play a variety of roles in the smartization process; the choice of one or more types of innovative initiatives concerns different so-called drivers, namely economy, environment, mobility, governance, people, and living (Giffinger et al, 2007). Smart cities aim at solving critical issues within urban areas (Lee, Hancock and Hu Lee, 2013), such as public services unavailability or shortages, traffic, over-development, environmental shortcomings, and other forms of inequality, all through ICT-based technology that is connected up as an urban infrastructure. In order to avoid these issues, city managers have to identify and develop new forms of participation for all stakeholders in smart cities (Nam and Pardo, 2011), namely people, private sector actors, universities and research centers, institutions and organizations. In this way, all of the issues concerning the different drivers can be focused with the right balance between technological and human features
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
