Smart City: Challenges and Opportunities' Experiences from European Smart Cities Projects

Abstract

Smart City: Challenges and Opportunities-Experiences from European Smart Cities Projects Cities globally embody the challenge of how to improve competitiveness while achieving social cohesion and environmental sustainability. Cities are fertile ground for science and technology, innovation and cultural activity, but at the same time, they are also places where problems such as environmental pollution, unemployment, segregation and poverty are concentrated. Complex problems like these require a holistic approach to urban development, together with an assessment of urban policies in terms of a comprehensive set of socio-economic and environmental indicators. Smart city governance innovations are redefining the options and opportunities for city governance and planning globally. The interplay of societal and technological innovation provides a universal dynamic that is driving the generation of new models of integrated and participatory, inclusive and open governance. This dynamic is impacting and disrupting the existing orthodoxies of governance, and raising numerous questions for urban planning. What is the defining architecture of open, co-created and inclusive urban governance? What are the most effective transition pathways to this new urban governance? To what extent can common solutions and models of urban governance be applied universally and effective globally, defining a new industry business model? The presentation will draw upon extensive experience of EU funded research and innovation projects (FP7 and Horizon 2020) concerning open smart city governance. A principal point of reference and input aises from the Smarticipate ongoing experiment in the development of open governance solutions for urban planning in collaboration with the partner cities of Rome, London and Hamburg. Similarly practical city planning solutions supporting smart open governance will be showcased from a number of projects including urbanAPI, URBIS, and DECUMANUS, involving the development and implementation of smart city governance applications in major European cities including Helsinki, London, Antwerp, Milan, Bologna and Madrid, Amiens and Osnabruck.