Abstract
During the latest years, smart city projects have been more and more popular and widespread all over the world. The continuous increasing of city’s population and the complexity of city management drive local governments towards the strong use of technologies to support a higher quality of urban spaces and a better offering of public services. The fascination of smart cities, able to link high technology, green environment and well-being for citizens, interests all the municipalities, independently on their dimensions, geographical area or culture. However, the concept of smart city is far from to be unambiguous. Several experiences all over the world show that cities define themselves as smart, but the meaning attributed to this word is different each time. Smart city concept has been growing from empirical experience, therefore a systemic theoretical study about this phenomenon still lacks. In this paper, the author aims to propose a comprehensive and verified definition of smart city, based on both a deep literature investigation about smart city studies and a large survey of smart city projects in the international panorama. The goal of this work is not only to provide a clear framework about this interesting and current topic, but also to support local governments and public administrations in effective smart city implementation, able to create public value and well being for citizens and environmental sustainability in the urban space.Â
Highlights
Smart city is a recent phenomenon, but its diffusion has been rapidly increasing in the latest few years [1]
Smart cities are nowadays widespread all over the world; in all the continents, cities are moving towards smarter urban spaces, using high technologies to face the crucial problems linked with the urban life like traffic, pollution, city crowding, poverty
A large literature survey shows what follows: the smart city concept is used to identify a large spectrum of heterogeneous solutions and city programs, involving different types of technologies and aiming to reach a very large set of different and not well-defined goals; in the meantime, several different words are used to define similar projects and solutions, even if each of them could be attributed to the idea of smart city
Summary
Smart city is a recent phenomenon, but its diffusion has been rapidly increasing in the latest few years [1]. A clear and sound definition of smart city still lacks, in the academic studies, and in empirical applications of smart concepts and projects [2]. A large literature survey shows what follows: the smart city concept is used to identify a large spectrum of heterogeneous solutions and city programs, involving different types of technologies and aiming to reach a very large set of different and not well-defined goals; in the meantime, several different words are used to define similar projects and solutions, even if each of them could be attributed to the idea of smart city. The similarities and the differences between all these “cities” are generally not explained [3]
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