In the last few years we have heard more and more about the Smart City concept, but what does it mean? The ‘Smart City’ in its terminological meaning, ‘Intelligent City’, already known in Anglo-American literature in 2008, by leaving a broad ‘definition’ in its meaning, gives space to the conceptualization of boundaries that are not really definable because they are in definition. The main focus seems to be the strategic role played by technological infrastructures for the development of cities, but in reality many studies identify the enabling factors of urban growth, understood as the capacity for progress, with increasing attention to the environment, improvement of levels of education and centrality of human resources, as well as social and relational capital.

As of today, there is no univocal definition of Smart City, in fact, the programmatic guidelines of the general conditions of the smart city find their common denominator in shared themes at a community-planetary level that are personalized in their own generative identity of the idea of smart city. Through the specific conditions dictated by the territory, the concept of Smart City is therefore still a young and multifaceted reasoning.

This condition generates spot and geopardal interventions in the cities, creating confusion in the citizen and in the transfer of the concept on the functioning of the city and its benefits, which is why, the European and national system is necessary on this matter. In summary, the smart city aims to create a compact, connected, socially inclusive and resilient URBE, suitable for everyone’s needs. A city capable of harnessing the power of technology, data and innovation to improve the quality of life of residents and to coordinate and integrate the sectors of urban, territorial and environmental management. The use of digitalization and new technologies are the primary tools to further raise the quality of life.

Digital technology can support the functioning of the city in its fundamental parts such as: planning of basic services, e-governance, land use and urban density, infrastructures, efficient roads and networks, integrated urban uses, public spaces, green infrastructures, public services, e – democracy and much more, these are the prerequisites for a functional city. The construction of the Smart City requires a concentration on the physical and technological layers of urban development by identifying different models: Technological model and Collaborative model.

The wired infrastructure, therefore, becomes the keystone of the cities and triggers the full experimental economic potential and its social development through innovation, openness and connectivity; ensures that environmental, social, territorial, urban and economic needs are met in the present and in the future; in one word ‘Sustainable-City’, a real revolution. A model of city that will produce a new historical identity strongly connected to the past, because it is the result of it, but with a futurist slant.

Giulia Agrosì