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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper.

Our summary today works with the article titled Smart cities concept and Challenges – Bases for the assessment of smart city projects from 2016 by Andres Monzon, published at the International Conference on Smart Cities and Green ICT Systems. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see a smart city assessment tool with city challenges and their available possibilities. This article introduces a project guide as a tool for implementing smart city projects that efficiently respond to complex and diverse urban challenges without compromising their sustainable development while improving the quality of life of their citizens.

Cities are the main poles of human and economic activity. They hold the potential to create synergies allowing great development opportunities to their inhabitants. However, they also generate a wide range of problems that can be difficult to tackle as they grow in size and complexity. Cities are also the places where inequalities are stronger and, if they are not properly, managed, their negative effects can surpass the positive ones. Urban areas need to manage their development, supporting economic competitiveness, while enhancing social cohesion, environmental sustainability and an increased quality of life of their citizens. With the development of new technological innovations such as ICT, the smart city emerges as a means to achieve more efficient and sustainable cities. Since its conception, the smart city notion has evolved from the execution of specific projects to the implementation of global strategies to tackle wider city challenges. Thus it is necessary to get a comprehensive overview of the available possibilities and relate them to the specific city challenges.

The ASCIMER – Assessing Smart Cities in the Mediterranean Region – project was a three-year research project developed by the Universidad Politecnica of Madrid to apply international and European smart city development to the Mediterranean Region. The project’s goals were to define the smart city concept and its contribution to urban development priorities, to develop a methodology to assess and prioritize smart city projects, to develop guidelines of implementation and management of smart city projects, and to characterise Mediterranean city challenges and to develop a transferability strategy of smart city projects. This article introduces the outputs of the first year in the project with the development of the smart city concept and the identification of the main urban development priorities.

Despite there is some kind of consensus that the smart city label represent innovation in city management, its services and infrastructures, a common definition of the term has not yet been stated. However, two trends can be clearly distinguished: there is an emphasis on urban technological and ecological aspects and the interconnection of all the urban aspects. The urban aspects’ approaches misunderstand the final goal of a smart city to provide a new approach to urban management with the interconnection that takes place in the real life of the city. Improving just one part of an urban ecosystem does not imply that the problems of the whole are being solved. In the interconnected understandings, infrastructure and technology are the main players enabling the combination, connection and integration of all systems, which is fundamental for a city to be smart. The smart city concept implies a comprehensive approach to city management and development with a balance of technological, economic, and social factors. A holistic approach is needed for the urban problems to take advantage of new technologies so that the urban model and the relationships among the stakeholders can be redefined.

The smart city also needs to include a user-centric approach that considers urban issues from the perspective of the citizen’s needs, the engagement of citizens in the city functioning, or a truly holistic approach to urban challenges that becomes essential for smart strategies. As seen, the definition of a smart city is a very broad concept that has technology as a basic aspect, coupled with social and human capital development. Therefore, the ASCIMER working definition for smart cities was the following: a smart city is an integrated system in which human and social capital interact, using technology-based solutions and it aims to efficiently achieve sustainable and resilient development and a high quality of life on the basis of a multistakeholder, municipality-based partnership.

The smart city model can lead to a better city planning and management and thus to the achievement of a sustainable model of urban growth. The research group identified challenges in six city dimensions for Mediterranean cities. The dimensions are governance, economy, mobility, environment, people, and living. The challenges differ based on their location being based in Europe or in the south and east of the Mediterranean. The challenges are not necessarily present problems, but future challenges which cities must take into account in an integrated way. Decisions in urban planning and management have long-term consequences. Although following this holistic approach, all the challenges can be classified in relation to the smart city action fields.

It is important to account for the differences between cities. A smart city project should not follow the same strategies in one or another urban area because the challenges, starting conditions, available resources and citizens’ willingness can be completely different. Based on the investigated Mediterranean cities, the research group created a diagram with the relations between issues and the six urban dimensions, living, people, mobility, governance, economy and environment. With this framework, smart city projects were investigated in the six urban dimensions.

The evolution of the concept of smart city leads from specific projects to global city strategies through which it is possible to address city challenges at different levels. Thus, it seems to be necessary to develop a strategy within city framework to articulate projects in different dimension in order to achieve a comprehensive and holistic vision. Therefore, the cities and projects were also investigated in regards to balancing out the dimensions. Based on these investigations, the research group was able to create a project guide for smart city.

The project guide is an information tool for cities that want to take advantage of the ICTs and solve their challenges through smart city projects. The guide links city challenges with a wide range of smart city projects designed to solve them. It is a tool for developing smart cities that efficiently respond to complex and diverse urban challenges without compromising their sustainable development while improving the quality of life of their citizens. This guide is a tool for decision-making. Once the specific city problems are identified, the guide provides information about the possible actions to take, as well as specific examples of on-going smart city projects that can respond to these challenges in a localised way.

Smart city projects must be multidimensional, and integrate the different action fields of the city interacting with human and social capital. Technological solutions must be understood as the tool to achieve the smart city goals and to tackle the challenges cities must face. The main objectives of smart city projects must be to solve urban problems in an efficient way to improve sustainability and the city and quality of life of its inhabitants. Projects must be framed in a multi-stakeholder, municipally-based partnership in order to provide complex and effective solutions.

As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. Smart city can be understood as an integrated system, in which human and social capital interact, using technology-based solutions, and it aims to efficiently achieve sustainable and resilient development and a high quality of life on the basis of a multistakeholder, municipality-based partnership.
2. Smart city projects must be based on the specifics of the city to solve the urban problems present in that area.
3. Cities can learn from each other but need to localise the solutions for their own specific situations.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. How much can these challenges and solutions be applied worldwide with localisation? Are the findings specific to the Mediterranean area?
2. Why isn’t it obvious that one definition of a smart city cannot be applied to a different place?
3. Why are only the decision-makers targeted with such tools if the bottom-up approach needs to be incorporated?

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