Smart City and Value Creation

Abstract

During the latest five years, the label smart city has been spreading all over the world, impacting on urban strategies in both large and small towns. To face the increasing problems of urban areas, local public government, companies, notfor-profit organizations and the citizens themselves embraced the idea of a smarter city, using more technologies, creating better life conditions and safeguarding the environment. However, today the smart city panorama appears very confused. No acknowledged smart city definition exists till now and several cities defining themselves smart completely lack of a strategic vision about their smart future. This first chapter is the introduction of this book collecting several contributes from different academic studies all over Europe. The aim of this work is to offer a large vision about the smart city phenomenon and to compare researches and considerations regarding how to define a smart city, how to design a smart strategy and how to measure if smart actions really are able to create public value for citizens and a better quality of life in urban spaces. This chapter introduces the most important themes regarding the smart city and further deepened in the ten chapters of the book.