Img CC by StepanFoto
The path to Smart City Exhibition 2013
Edizioni
The path to Smart City Exhibition 2013 Edited by Claudio Forghieri and Andrea Mochi Sismondi Edizioni FORUM PA – April 2013 ISBN 9788897169239
The content is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Italy: Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike. The full text, available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
Img CC by followtheseinstructions
The path to Smart City Exhibition 2013
Since we are experiencing a time of great difficulty and facing important challenges, thinking about the city and their transformation to smart communities is highly strategic.
In this paradigm, which is based on the pillars of participation, social and technological innovation, sustainability, a sense of necessary rebirth for Italy is contained. For this reason, the Italian vision of smart cities is absolutely original and peculiar for any territory. If on one side the urban spaces have the most part of problems, on the other side, they have the opportunity to solve them. Today we are facing a complete state of economic uncertainty, to which social, environmental and governance problems are added. The perception of an uncertain future, felt from companies and families, is caused by a real threat of the energy crisis, that governments unfortunately don’t face. Policy loses representativeness; new social movements from below rebuild the electoral scenarios thanks to their engagement on local dimensions. However, in this uncertain context, we find many extraordinary opportunities that we can get thanks to the “digital side of cities”, characterised by connectivity and frameworks, calculation and storage, vertical apps and services. If this new side will be integrated with tools and solutions that can enable the civic empowerment , it can bring to new, innovative and efficient solutions, to the research of new operative models, to new shared solutions for common problems that unfortunately don’t have any answer nowadays.
Smart Cities dimensions In this context there is the commitment of FORUM PA, able to create continuity between the dimension of Smart City and strategic plans, the importance of territorial marketing, the perspective of open government, the constant attention to social and technological innovation. Smart City Exhibition in Bologna and FORUM PA in Rome represent the main exhibitions that aim at sustaining territories and communities to think about these themes, to find new positive paths. Cities are the right place where it’s possible to find those dimensions where technology, participation and social innovation can become drivers for development and for a different perception of quality of life.
The dimension of economy and sustainable growth, that today is totally ailing, can benefit from innovative companies. In this context the faculties of a territory to attract talents and financings, the will to support start-up and to transform the urban space in living labs for new projects play a central role. In this particular dimension, many differences among connected cities and those remote/isolated arise. Connection is the capability to create a network at a local level, among the actors of the territory, but also at national and international level increasing also those relationships that bring to cities new ideas, projects, financings, opportunities and people. The social dimension, deeply transformed by networks and social media. They have influenced dynamics: on one side, they created many relationship opportunities – less distance and time but also less contents on the other side, they created new digital divide. This is the dimension where it’s necessary to define, in a right way, the boundary of common goods, where the value of relational goods is high and where we play the battle for inclusion of new citizens and for the excluded ones. In this dimension, we have to spur new technologies because information and knowledge can become a shared and accessible good. The dimension of governance, that needs a global view in which all potentialities of stakeholders can emerge. It can connect resources, in a new community logic, that will see a change in the relationship between government and citizens. Here we find the principles of open government that define the borders of transparency and accountability of government actions. New models and new approaches are always more based on sharing – resources and tools – and always more less on ownership. These are new models of common goods, new ways to share knowledge that can transform the ordinary models of government we know. In this dimension, the participation, thanks also to the potentialities of internet, is able to create an extraordinary public value in the form of co-design, civic hacking, crowdsourcing and participatory sensing. The cultural dimension is characterised by new forms of creativity that meet the need to enhance the extraordinary urban, architectural and artistic heritage of the country. In this dimension we can see new forms of access and positive contamination; a renaissance is possible starting from cities. The dimension of urban hacking changes the urban space to adapt it to citizens’ needs; the dimension of living labs transforms territory and its citizens in micro areas for aware trials; the dimension of a creative contamination that creates new ways of problem solving in those decisional processes and business models/patterns. The environmental dimension for sustainability: the main projects, that characterise the European and North America metropolis- where it’s possible already to see the first benefits - have developed starting from these themes. The sustainable mobility, “0 km” markets, the urban gardens, the increase in planting trees for the right proportion between nature and urban space, a new attention to the quality of life in cities that influence daily choices, logistic and life styles belong to this dimension.
Technologies All dimensions we listed above meet a new spatial dimension that is characterised by technologies. They integrate with streets, buildings and all citizens that live in. All those technologies that make this dimension real and concrete transform cities in a living organism made up of several layers connected among them. There’s the layer that is in contact with territory and its citizens, made up of frameworks that receive and send data: sensors, cameras, smartphones and mobile devices. This level represents a new and revolutionary condition that, for the first time in mankind history, enables high levels of participation and, at the same time, of control of activities. 4
There’s the layer to communicate, a network made up of cables and waves that allows data circulation. Unfortunately in this case our country has a large delay. Only a strong action to apply all the actions that the Digital Agenda foresees can solve part of the problem. The layer of processing and storage, that enables a real time government condition, thanks also to the extraordinary resources that are available today in cloud computing. For this level it’s necessary to specify the vertical applications, that are useful for particular services – tele-surveillance, traffic, environmental monitoring etc…. – and the necessary platforms of integration and control that allow to manage the whole system.
Open questions These three technological levels represent the base of the most innovative projects and local and central public administration have to include them in development plans of cities. Smart City Exhibition 2012 Edition has proposed this technological approach both in all plenary sessions and in all workshops and meetings dedicated to mobility, energy, social participation. Many questions are already open and there is a risk to limit the potential of Smart cities. Projects that consider the installation of sensor networks are developing all around the world and they are supported by companies, specialised by this field, thanks to the savings that’s possible to have through a right management of these activities. Realities such as the cities of Santander, in Spain, or Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, have already today thousands of control devices. In some cases, for example in the case of smart street lights, is very simple to see and touch the real economical advantages that is possible to have. For other challenges the question is already open. The efficiency of in this field – from the selling of data to companies, to public-private partnerships – has already to be demonstrated and unfortunately the situation of public balances and of local utilities doesn’t support high investments. We need to understand how to stimulate business and how much time we need. We have to find cities that can be a real lab to test solutions. A right pattern for public-private partnership will be always more crucial for the right accomplishment of a Smart City. Maybe there will be a strong competition among cities that will be able to become a good partner for companies. Definition of a clear vision at a medium-long term of developments and of priorities of territories, presence of an expert management, international relationships among cities will be the determining assets of this competition. For the success of partnership patterns, new tools for measuring performances, that can quantify times and outcomes, are necessary. It’s also necessary to test new innovative patterns of public procurement, based on success fee idea; in this case these patterns can avoid all obstacles of the stability agreement. It’s necessary that in this particular moment, where experimental projects constantly increase, our country has to give the right direction to companies, local and central authorities in order to adopt shared visions and standards, if possible also at international level. This will allow to have a shared strategy for the right use of all solutions among different realities. We unfortunately remember the chaotic initial phase of e-government project. The digital alphabetization of public employees and citizens is a fundamental pillar for the right accomplishment of a Smart City. It’s necessary for creating a new awareness that leads to the innovation to all levels. Schools, for young people, and cities have the duty to take charge of outreach programs Cities can have extraordinary tools for the control, in real time, of all vital functions of territories. However they have to be well supported: new ways of sharing information and data, new organizational patterns 5
have to develop. In this field the right training of managers and leadership is really important. The Italian Digital Agenda faces the theme of Smart Cities in the so called Decreto“Crescita 2.0”, where it generally refers to smart communities, to a national programme that will have to give the right recommendations for activities to follow and to a national committee supported by the Agency for Digital Italy. Unfortunately this approach is too vague. In our country we need more precise definitions: what do we mean for “smart communities”? What is the dimension we refer to? While in Europe governments and institutions think about Smart Cities and define huge investments, in Italy there’s not define actions and we risk to loose important investment opportunities.
Smart= collaboration and sharing Smart City is not only technology. Smart City is also relationships, participation, collaboration, sharing. These elements can bring to innovative and stimulating approaches. The crowdsourcing, a revolution for public notices that enable unknown populations to participate actively to decisions; the citizen sensing, a process that transforms citizens in sensors for sensible cities; co-design methods that allow citizens to take part to the planning of urban spaces and services; the gamification, a process that allows to use the videogames methods to reproduce and simulate the functions of cities and support decisional processes; the co-working, a process that is nearer to workers needs. These new forms of collaboration and sharing – of risks, resources and financings – let emerge an important factor: the third sector (citizens, universities etc…) becomes an important player for Smart City process. In order to improve governance and cities performances, Mayors and local authorities have to change their approach and have to work following the networks logics with a support from technologies. Even in this case, thanks to the use of modern technology and the possibilities offered by networks, citizens can do better than local administrations if they are missing. In South America, for example, volunteers paint cycle lanes and crosswalks that urban planners have forgot.
The innovation words of SCE 2013 Are the Italian Digital Agenda measures sufficient to achieve these aims? Maybe not. Even the City Plan of the Minister of Infrastructure and the Public notice 2012 of the Minister of Universities and Research are not sufficient. However thanks to these actions, Italian companies and local authorities have focused on these themes. It’s not a coincidence that to write this document, we have used many English words. They are often neologisms, innovative ideas that come from other countries and are difficult to translate. We are sure that also in Italy, it will be possible to coin words that refer to innovation. FORUM PA and BOLOGNAFIERE have decided to organize SMART City Exhibition .We consider the role of strategic urban innovation as a fundamental dimension for the country-development. The first edition of SCE2012, which took place in Bologna from 29 to 31 October 2012, brought together leading Italian and international experts from fifteen countries, policy makers of hundred and fifty cities and numerous Italian companies. It was a great time of collaborative working and this document only covers part of it extrapolating a few short sentences and the essence of about five hundred reports and presentations available on the website www.smartcityexhibition.it .We thank all the speakers and participants in workshops that we considers our co-authors. 6
The next edition, SCE2013 – will be held once again in Bologna, from the 16 to 18 of October, 2013, with some important news. The event is fully integrated and simultaneously with the SAIE, 2013, the Fair of Construction Innovation, and thus presents visitors with a proposal for a broader view on the whole issue of sustainable and intelligent constructions. The conference program confirms the presence of major European cities and international experts, to stimulate discussion within national projects and to push the emergence of new partnerships on projects. The program of the laboratory - perhaps the most innovative format of the event, where you will meet experts with the objective to develop tangible solutions - has been enhanced to meet the requests of the Italian cities to have constructive moments of shared work. The exhibition area, further enhanced to enable the integration with the SAIE, provides space for networking and matching supply and demand as well as some sections of new issues, such as sustainable mobility. While the strong partnerships with ANCI, Emilia Romagna Region and the Municipality of Bologna, real wheels of the success of the first edition, are confirmed, the group of administrations that identified in the event the optimal place to introduce themselves in a territorial community together with local businesses, are amplified. A specific section of the event is dedicated to projects funded by MIUR 2012, so as to allow a constant update of work in progress. We strongly believe that there is the need to work on SMART City Exhibition to consolidate innovative efforts that many Italian cities are making nowadays. It is for this reason that the program of the event is open to proposals and suggestions, which we hope, will be numerous during the months before the event.
7