This essay introduces urban regeneration concepts with a smart city perspective, and elaborates around the possible transformations of the city towards new design, management, and intelligent controls. It compares the innovative ferment of many cities in the world, with their differences and peculiarities, sometimes with their entropy, caused by simply assuming product innovation, without a consistent social and cultural framework.
Smart City has impressively introduced the data issue in the city, not only as a cognitive element for improving the urban design, but as a widespread, accessible information on elements, infrastructure, city places. The transition from the sustainable city to the smart city has its focus on data availability, and has its matrix of success on the economy linked to data.
In recent years smart city concepts have been very popular for the industry, who joined cities in their efforts towards a new information and communication society, who devised the Internet of Things, and pulsed the augmented-reality to develop and spread knowledge on a city scale.
The industry is looking for innovative solutions to address new markets, in rapid evolution. European cities can provide genuine demonstration platforms: living labs as demo-zones to test full scale applications; to compare, to measure them in their socal and economic impacts; to propose sustainable and self-sufficient innovation to the internal market and to the emerging economies.
Intelligent districts, decentralized renewable sources, eco-building, info-mobility, new vehicles, smart grids, decentralized solutions are areas of research and development with an innovatory impact on our urban fabric, but at the same time on our government and professional structures, on our education and research systems. Data networks that are available, chaotic, but good enough are disruptive technologies, unthinkable in the past, to support decisions, strategies, lines of action
