Implementation of the Smart City Concept in the Eu: Importance of Cluster Initiatives and Best Practice Cases

Abstract

The Smart City concept is a challenge for all levels of public administration. With a growing degree of urbanization socio-economic problems accumulate in urban agglomeration. The Smart City concept has the potential to effectively address those issues by implementing relevant projects. Our main objective is to analyze Smart City concept in EU with emphasize to Smart Governance. Specifically, we investigate four areas related to Smart City concept, such as: the importance of Smart City Governance including Smart City manager role, the position of Smart City concept in EU policies, tools for it's promotion among EU countries and good practices of municipalities in implementing Smart City concept. The article was processed using analysis of relevant information sources. Regarding our results, the paper brings in an useful insight into Smart City manager role, concerned EU policies (especially 5G, Big data, ICT innovation and Internet of Things), tools as Smart City Clusters, Smart City living labs and examples including comparison of municipalities representing good practices (Amsterdam, Helsinki, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Vienna). In addition, we claim that the current concept of the Smart City within the EU institutions as well as within identified Smart City clusters and cities as examples of best practice is predominantly technological. However, professional discourse has shifted in recent years to the dimension of municipalities as an organizational and management component which lead to the idea of Smart Governance. Gathered findings could provide an inspiration to municipalities and their management in order to face new challenges related to the Smart City area.

Sustainable Mobility and the Smart City: A Vision of the City of the Future: The Case Study of Cracow (Poland)

“…According to incomplete statistics, 1000 cities can be identified around the world as having entered the path of intelligent development [3]. Despite growing interest and the publication of numerous studies), no clear conclusions can yet be drawn [9,[77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86] (approximately 200,000 articles [80] are written annually). Terms such as: "wired city", "ubiquitous city", "digital city", "smart communities", "intelligent city", "information city", "technocity" and "knowledge city" are often used interchangeably.…”

Reviewing the State-of-the-Art of Smart Cities in Portugal: Evidence Based on Content Analysis of a Portuguese Magazine

“…Although they focus on research and innovation in the areas of energy, transport, climate action, and resource efficiency, and support the development of skills and expansion of companies, they lack the promotion of initiatives focused on the development of holistic and sustained strategies. Despite the impetus of European Commission programs, two of the main tools for the development of the European smart city initiatives have been the creation of clusters and living laboratories [44]. In recent years, many cities, such as Barcelona and Vienna, have become the stages of pilot projects for new solutions, fostering innovation and collaboration between the public sector, companies, and academia.…”

Smart Cities and Innovation Clusters

“…Cluster initiatives can foster the development of SC development and even more frequently, SC can be cluster boosters. In this perspective, the initiatives analysed in this paper may indeed represent what Alaverdyan et al (2018) have called Smart City Clusters. They define them by the notion of "co-operation of institutionalized actors through cluster initiatives".…”

“…They promote the SC concept by focusing more on the promotion of the SC technology market position of their cluster's members. Further examples of Living Labs created to promote the smart development of cities may be found for instance in Amsterdam (ALL), Barcelona (22@Barcelona), Helsinki (FLL) (Bifulco et al, 2017;Alaverdyan et al, 2018). Amongst the regional initiatives, the Andalucía Smart City cluster represents an example of an alliance of private companies, institutions from the energy, environment, transport, ICT and mobility sectors, cities and universities, aimed at the creation and development of sustainable, efficient and comfortable smart cities as well as of jobs and wealth in the urban business community.…”