Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
obsolete machines'' as fears Saskia Sassen (
2011
), who is suggesting hacking the
city to facilitate its transformation through informal actions performed by the
citizens' collective intelligence.
Therefore, a smart city is not only a more intelligent, technologically managed
and efficient city but more skilled, fair and equal (Bullard
2007
) which profoundly
innovates its sources of knowledge, dialectic capacity, development dynamics and
revises its settlement patterns: a more ''ingenious'' city'' (Granelli
2012
). The
smart city passes from being reactive to proactive by effectively using a better and
broader information flow. It invests in people—men and women before human
capital—enhancing their ability to empower the social capital, strengthening
participation processes, extending education and spreading culture by improving
the new mobile communications infrastructures (Campbell
2012
). It focuses
simultaneously on software and hardware, to ensure a higher quality of life for all
citizens with an accountable resources management through cooperative gover-
nance practices.
They are defined Smart and Creative Cities (Carta
2014
) as they will have to be
able to innovate high-impact areas: planning, urban design and land management,
energy production-distribution-consumption cycle, transport of goods, develop-
ment of mobility for people and freight, buildings energy efficiency and active
participation. Complex realms, involving several actors such as education, health,
waste as well as the enhancement and use of the cultural heritage and tourist
attractiveness will have to be innovated. However, cities can not limit themselves
to their infrastructures, but shall contribute to increase the rate of ''collective
intelligence''. Moreover, a city that aspires to be skilled and resourceful needs to
show solidarity too supporting, through cloud communting, bottom-up virtuous
behaviours from below by emphasising the individual and collective benefits of
open urbanism.
3
Therefore, urban smartness should be more than just an adjective that applies to
traditional governance, planning and management methods, but rather a challenge
to gain tacit skills and generate new knowledge, creativity and innovation. The
sustainable development of a smart city is based on the comprehensive rethinking
of its metabolism focused on waste reduction, separation and collection and
consequent economic exploitation, on the efficiency of urban agriculture and the
drastic reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. To this end, the reorganization of
private car traffic and the optimization of industrial emissions is of pivotal
importance. The improvement of the construction industry and the housing market
through a real innovation of the buildings in terms of structural efficiency, reor-
ganization of public lighting and better management of urban green areas are the
3
In Helsinki open data, living lab and crowdsourcing are now daily items on the agenda,
accelerated by the Forum Virium Helsinki 's Smart City Project Area with the purpose of making
the metropolitan region of the Finnish capital a good practice as for the provision of digital
services within urban regeneration processes, starting from Arabianranta, the new creative dis-
trict of the city.
