Abstract
The aim of this work is to analyze the projects carried out by public institutions in the field of smartness, in order to reflect on the most effective mechanisms of governance. To this end, the paper is organized into two main sections. The first section provides a literature analysis of theoretical frameworks as they pertain to the role of political bodies, the policies, and their impacts on local communities in relation to the governance of smart cities. The second section explores the ongoing implementation of “smart city” projects in Italy, in order to understand how cities address their development perspectives from a conceptual framework to the construction of an actual urban space, faced with divergent politics, messy social systems, and different scales of urban governance. In this framework, disparities between urban governance scales and ideologies encompassing smart cities seem linked to the relational systems that local administrations can develop between neighboring cities. The final section summarizes the authors’ conclusions, giving particular attention to how networked urban systems are programmed, because they have been found to be key to strategic and transformative planning.
Coming together is the beginning.
Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success.
Henry Ford (1863–1947).
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
The Italian Digital Agenda (ADI), i.e., a steering committee, and makes reference to a decree dated October 18, 2012 to further urgent measures for the growth of the country and has established a process for implementing ADE. (The Dynamics of Broadband Markets in Europe: Realizing the 2020 Digital Agenda.)
- 3.
The authors intend the term Smart Territory to mean a wide area identified by specific characteristics that make it unique. In this regard, the literature is varied. However, in the literature, this definition is translated in different ways, depending on the field (geography, urban planning, or regional economy) and on the nationality of the authors. Besides the Smart Territory terminology (Louman et al. 2015; Carroll et al. 2014), we can find similar terms such as Smart Region (Roth et al. 2013; Morandi et al. 2015) and Smart Land (Bonomi et al. 2014).
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The name of this law comes from the name of the Minister of Infrastructures and Transport, Graziano Delrio.
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In particular, Mejer argues: “the idea of smart city governance as concentrated intelligence stresses that new technologies—big data, data warehousing, monitoring tools—enable central steering actors to strengthen their intelligence, provide more integrated services, develop better policies, and steer other actors in the city more effectively. […] The idea of distributed intelligence highlights that new technologies—social media, Internet, open data—enable the various actors in the city to collaborate more effectively and produce better solutions for the city. […] The two modes of smart city governance are ideal types and should be seen as extremes on a scale of smart in other word, city governance. Intermediate forms are modes of hybrid smart city governance. Hybrids may lean towards one of the extremes or form a balanced combination of concentrated and distributed forms of governance” (Meijer 2015: 77–78).
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Acknowledgments
This study is supported by the MIUR (Ministry of Education, Universities and Research [Italy]) through a project entitled Governing the smart city: a gOvernance-centred approach to SmarT urbanism—GHOST (Project code:RBSI14FDPF; CUP Code: F22I15000070008) financed with the SIR (Scientific Independence of Young Researchers) program. We authorize the MIUR to reproduce and distribute reprints for governmental purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation thereon. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the MIUR.
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Garau, C., Balletto, G., Mundula, L. (2017). A Critical Reflection on Smart Governance in Italy: Definition and Challenges for a Sustainable Urban Regeneration. In: Bisello, A., Vettorato, D., Stephens, R., Elisei, P. (eds) Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions. SSPCR 2015. Green Energy and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44899-2_14
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