Abstract
The idea of sustainable smart city has extensive scientific literature where the architects’ role in designing built environments, being a physical platform for implementing “elderly-friendly” solutions, is poorly referenced. The main objective of the article is to define the role of architects in creating the image of sustainable smart cities, focusing on senior citizens. The paper surveys the available literature on the subject and describes pilot studies carried out at the indicative level among the students of one of architecture faculties in Poland, based on the design thinking method. The studies demonstrate how students imagine intelligent elderly-friendly cities in the future from the architects’ perspective. In addition, examples of other studies with the students of that faculty are presented. Following the analyses combining the conclusions of research and pilot studies with the students, a tabular summary of the architects’ tasks and roles were provided—these were divided into six building blocks of a smart city and as a reference to the elements shaping the image of cities, districts and buildings. This is a new, innovative classification of architectural issues. The perspectives for further desk research and field participatory research were indicated, which should, in the future, translate into a novel holistic approach to the problem.
Highlights
The sustainable development of cities is one of the key challenges of the modern world
The ideas which satisfied the key condition of the research, i.e., a reference to architecture, could be assessed as rather conservative, and replicating what is known from reality
In the field of communication and public or individual transport, the following was proposed: “roofed, lit, closable stops, with ergonomic seats and places for shopping bags, walking sticks, crutches, walkers, pets; moving walkways in popular public places, or quiet traffic paths separated from faster traffic paths”; in the area of “smart” solutions, the idea of “drones distributing mail or medicines ordered from the pharmacy” was proposed
Summary
The sustainable development of cities is one of the key challenges of the modern world. It should be noted that, in the literature, the concepts of sustainable city and smart city are sometimes investigated separately. Saaty and Pierfrancesco De Paola treat the sustainable city, smart city and compact city as separate models. Kahn claims that the improvements of information technology, and advances in the know-how on the reduction of pollution, and following it health benefits for residents imply that more cities will be striving for “smart” sustainable development [5]. Such a viewpoint is presented in the present paper
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