Medium-Sized Smart Cities: A Smart Vision for Urban Centralities and Buildings. From the European Case History, to a Proposal for the City of Parma, Italy

Abstract

Smart city arouses the image of metropolis or even megacities, and many Smart city models aim at enhancing the performances of big cities. Yet in Europe, it is necessary to deal with a fact: most people dwelling cities, live in Medium-sized cities. These cities therefore create an important critical mass, both because they are very numerous, and because they suffered the greatest criticalities in terms of environmental pollution, life quality, mobility and also building sustainability. Beginning from the scientific literature and the rankings of Medium-sized cities, as well as the concept of Functional Urban Area, this research deepens medium city as a territorial issue, with an urban attractive core, and a wider complex landscape. The boundaries definition of a medium city, and the analysis of its geomorphological, infrastructural and functional criticalities, may be the key for a new interpretation of Smart strategies for their sustainable development. The research output is the proposal of an innovative tool, addressed to leaders and planners of the Smart Medium-sized city. This tool may allow a critical reading of the city, by georeferencing material and immaterial data about the city and its functional area, crossing open data and morphological characters in an interactive dashboard. After the case history of European Medium-sized cities, the research focuses on the role of Parma, Italian Medium-sized city, with a proposal about a future smart development, for consolidating results obtained during 2020, with the cultural leadership of the Italian Cultural Capital award.