Smart cities and smart mobilities

Abstract

Sociodemographics are transforming the world into an ‘archipelago of cities’, with over 70 % of the world’s population concentrated in urban environments by 2050. This trend brings as many threats (impact of pollution on public health, economic losses caused by congestion) as perspectives for new urban organizations. In this context, ‘smart cities’ are emerging. Although heterogeneous, smart cities have in common the optimization of data management to improve urban services, i.e. transport, energy, waste, habitat, health, education and culture. The issue of transportation crosses over all aspects of smart cities, whether in terms of urban design and social organization (more compact towns and distance work to reduce flows), or organizing new ways to manage vehicle capacities and infrastructure (shared fleets, car sharing, urban charging, road lane management), combined with the mid- or long-term dissemination of incremental innovations (electric vehicles) or disruptive innovations (autonomous vehicles). For the traditional automobile ecosystem (car and equipment manufacturers, etc.), the emergence of smart cities constitutes a potentially disruptive challenge with the calling into question of combustion cars in towns, new competition with other industrial players (information technology, community services, utilities, etc.) and the diversification of economic models (reliance on big data, less ownership, more service-rich).