Smart City Implementation and Aspects: The case of St. Petersburg

Abstract

Cities in the world face the problem of combining competitiveness and sustainable development at the same time. Urban space forms a much more subtle matter in terms of the simultaneous scale and point of processes spectrum. Certainly, the city is the primary source of generation fundamental anthropogenic factors within the framework of human activity (ecology, transport, society and security). However, on the other hand, in the current realities, it also becomes a structural tools mechanism for creating qualitatively new drivers of development (for example, intelligent infrastructure networks for urban mobility or closed-loop water supply). The city as a dynamic system has a certain set of patterns. The basic ones regulate the system development, complexity of mechanisms and diversification of modules designed. The critical ones regulate system stability and the preservation of existing stable state. Providing modularity of urban management architecture will allow scaling the interaction chain within the socio-technical system (i.e. the city), which make it possible to minimize the risk of destructive strategic decisions. Smart city as a platform provides transparency of the urban space processes and forms a two-level management (citizen-government). An effect indicator of high technology implementation is not so much a formal achievement of indicators values, but as the parameter of the complex infrastructure regime of a certain urban area in a given chronological period. When we have such projects of this level, the citizens themselves act as the center of aggregation of new meanings, values, and needs. On the basis of their everyday life situations, a framework of knowledge is designed for further strategic urban space planning. The authors of this article propose to revise the traditional understanding of the concept of “smart city” and consider the case of development of St. Petersburg as a “smart city”, based on the value-oriented approach.