Abstract
Abstract. This paper investigates how the historical and cultural heritage of cities is and can be underpinned by means of smart city tools, solutions and applications. Smart cities stand for a conceptual technology-and-innovation driven urban development model. By becoming ‘smart’, cities seek to achieve prosperity, effectiveness and competitiveness on multiple socio-economic levels. Although cultural heritage is one of the many issues addressed by existing smart city strategies, and despite the documented bilateral benefits, our research about the positioning of urban cultural heritage within three smart city strategies (Barcelona, Amsterdam, and London) reveals fragmented approaches. Our findings suggest that the objective of cultural heritage promotion is not substantially addressed in the investigated smart city strategies. Nevertheless, we observe that cultural heritage management can be incorporated in several different strategic areas of the smart city, reflecting different lines of thinking and serving an array of goals, depending on the case. We conclude that although potential applications and approaches abound, cultural heritage currently stands for a mostly unexploited asset, presenting multiple integration opportunities within smart city contexts. We prompt for further research into bridging the two disciplines and exploiting a variety of use cases with the purpose of enriching the current knowledge base at the intersection of cultural heritage and smart cities.
Highlights
In recent years, increasing urbanisation along with a rapid population growth in major modern cities have been impacting the quality of citizens’ life at technical, social, economic and organisational level
In this paper we investigated the ways in which cultural heritage is and can be incorporated in smart city strategies
We examined three smart city strategies of large European cities, focusing our attention into the positioning of the cultural heritage theme within the smart city strategy, and further by investigating whether smart city applications related to cultural heritage management exist therein
Summary
In recent years, increasing urbanisation along with a rapid population growth in major modern cities have been impacting the quality of citizens’ life at technical, social, economic and organisational level. Smart city initiatives along with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) integration aim to advance traditional networks while providing efficient services and public benefits urban dwellers. While we observe that the smart city literature variably sets forth the objectives of cultural advancement, touristic development and heritage preservation, research into the specificities of the relationship between urban ‘smartness’ and cultural heritage remains limited. There is no complete review of smart city applications used in the domain of cultural heritage worldwide. Addressing this research gap, in this paper we aim to examine how the historical and cultural heritage of cities is and can be underpinned by means of smart city tools, solutions and applications
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