Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
tangible actions and intangible feedback. Smart cities are components of a new
urban organism able to rethink the development and to encourage a ''creative
explosion'', leading smartness-based initiatives as part of a European post-
metropolitan vision.
8.1
Open Urbanism Scenario
We are increasingly immersed in the society of knowledge, creativity and inno-
vation, today universally regarded as the key to competitiveness, true anti-cyclical
factors with respect to the crisis that has overrun the capitalist development pro-
tocols and which requires processes of knowledge creation, spread and replace-
ment. It requires a constant, powerful and pervasive flow of knowledge, exchange
of information, and instant evaluation about the effects of government actions.
Innovation has no boundaries, it affects each and every an aspect of institutions
and enterprises and operates as a ''mutagen'' of society, requiring a paradigm shift
to whom bears the responsibility of governing under the aegis of a renewed
leadership. In early 2014 The Economist has published a report about the rise of
startups and smart communities, recognizing a new Cambrian Explosion: ''digital
startups are bubbling up in an astonishing variety of services and products,
penetrating every nook and cranny of the economy. They are reshaping entire
industries and even changing the very notion of the firm''.
1
Startups, fablabs,
makers and smart citizens have given rise to a global urban movement and most
cities now have a sizeable colony: a true smart ecosystem. Between them they are
home to hundreds of accelerators and thousands of smart places and co-working
spaces, and all these ecosystems must be highly interconnected and integrated in a
renewed urban metabolism driven by more adequate planning paradigms and tools
(Carta
2014
).
Today the new path ahead of the world socio-economies is to draw on the long
network flows, transforming them through spatial patterns into energy for local
systems. These flows, once diversified into veins of identity, generate value in the
local realm to be re-entered in the large global corridors that will thus be revita-
lised, nurtured, characterized and differentiated. Among the challenges resulting
from the connections between global and local, knowledge and skills are the most
ambitious and complex. It is no longer just a matter of Lisbon Strategy (2000),
which advises such a paradigm shift, but a shared need for hope. A hope for the
1
See: A Cambrian Moment. The Economist, special Report. January 18th 2014. About 540 -
million years ago something amazing happened on the Earth: life forms began to multiply,
leading to what is known as the ''Cambrian explosion'': until then sponges and other simple
creatures had the planet largely to themselves, but within a few million years the animal kingdom
became much more varied and interconnected.
