Participants at this national roundtable highlighted smart energy and smart building as key components of the smart city concept. “Smartness” in urban contexts was seen as entailing the pursuit of two main objectives: efficiency in the face of resource scarcity, and a higher standard of living. To achieve these goals, it was deemed essential to focus efforts on three fronts in particular. Firstly, infrastructure is a necessary though insufficient precondition for services to be able to respond to complexity, which in urban contexts stems from an admixture of markedly varied needs. Also required – it was felt – are creative entrepreneurship and a shared strategic vision. Indeed, it was suggested that the great attention lavished on the concept of smartness in recent years has resulted in a flourishing of different approaches and definitions, which often fail to connect with each other. There was a perceived need, instead, for a single long-term strategy, within which however local experimentation can be grounded.
Another aspect characterized as perhaps pivotal was that of striking a balance between top-down planning and market initiatives. In this regard, it was noted that ambitious long-term governance, capable of prioritizing the new “wellbeing” – that is, awareness-related, aesthetic, and self-fulfillment – needs of individuals and making them strategic goals, also involves risks of delay and ineffectiveness in grasping newly emerging developments in the market. Recent technological advancement was seen as placing great importance on identifying such new needs, rekindling the dichotomy (inherent in Western thinking) between the individual and the community/network. In the new age of supercharged interconnection, it was urged that the concept of “glocalization” needs to be revisited so as not to lose sight of individual and local distinctiveness, by avoiding exclusive emphasis being placed on network links, but also on individual hubs.
It was observed that the success of high-innovation sectors is often based on the effectiveness of the standardization of technological solutions (deemed to be currently lacking in said sectors), precise rules of governance, and the innovation capacity of “over the top” operators, who are more directly connected with users. The participants stressed that planning needs to focus on infrastructure and standardization that are able to create a grounding for innovation “at the farthest reaches”, which cannot be planned for a priori. For example, few imagined, when cellphones first appeared, that they would soon evolve into devices used to send images and take photos. Likewise, smart homes could bring into homes services typically provided outside them, such as healthcare.
Standardization was also seen as having the potential to overcome the risk that uncertainty – typical of rapidly-changing scenarios – will result in investment inertia. It was highlighted that another way of responding to this challenge is through “no regret actions”, that is, actions that carry no irreversible effects from a systemic perspective.
At this point in the discussions, the participants enumerated the following themes as central to the development of smart cities:
- Smart building: the challenge identified here was that of achieving urban regeneration which, especially in Italy, runs into the widespread presence of old buildings (termed “stupid building”), but also of an old culture, which inhibits the growth of the circular economy and the reduction of waste. This was characterized as a challenge not only affecting residential areas but also industrial and institutional zones, where value is created.
- Smart homes and digital energy: namely, the application of innovative IT solutions to energy end-consumption. By way of example, it was submitted that equipping homes with interconnected control systems to optimize household appliance consumption could have game-changing consequences and generate large amounts of data capable of fueling strategic analyses and refinements. In this regard, it was seen as necessary to recognize which players in the market – from among utility companies, tech creators, IT operators, and relevant start-ups – would be capable of playing a key role within new business models, and to understand what kind of partnerships could be forged.
- Smart mobility: in this respect, it was felt that the advent of autonomous vehicles will certainly prove a game-changer, but an important contribution will also be made by creative solutions able to overcome mobility challenges specific to particular local contexts, such as vertically-developing cities.