The Human Smart Cities Manifesto: A Global Perspective

Abstract

Cities are progressively adopting information and communication technologies (ICTs) to ensure that their critical infrastructures and utilities are managed more efficiently, thus becoming smart cities. In this sense, the concept of smart city has created a new market opportunity for the traditional ICT industry, focused on the physical and technical endowments and neglecting the truism that cities are made of people. Not surprisingly, ‘technology-pushed’ solutions have often failed to engage the citizens and the public authorities themselves, who didn’t take ownership of the ‘smart’ services experimented in this way. A claim for democracy, innovation and participation is becoming increasingly pressing, establishing the need to ‘listen and talk to the streets’ and ultimately changing the governance paradigm. These challenges call for a transformation in the way we all work, live, play and build our future, which in turn places a special burden on those holding the responsibility to govern such processes with an optimum usage of the public resources available. The reality is therefore that cities are only smart when they manage to take full advantage of the human capital of their citizens, creating innovation ecosystems where the new dynamics of wealth and job creation takes place and promotes new forms of participatory governance, in short, when they become Human Smart Cities. The Human Smart Cities Manifesto, launched during the Forum for Public Administrations in Rome, June 2013, is presented.