Festival dell'architettura

Smart City key words (author processing)

Download

Abstract

The Smart City word borns as an answer to some important problems that the XXI century city is asked to answer: population growing, urbanisation, climatic changes. The development of the XX century city was carried on in a deregulated way, without considering that the “Earth good” was limited and its ecosystem breakable. It is into this crisis climate that the concept of intelligent city borns and develops. The paper aims to study this issue from the origins of the word and from the historic evolution that made the concept real.

Text

“Europe is building herself. It 'a great hope, which will be possible only if we take into account the history: a Europe without history could only be orphan and miserable. Because today depends from yesterday, and tomorrow is the result of the past. A past that shall not paralyze the present, but help him to be different in fidelity, and innovative in progress.” (Jacques Le Goff, in Benevolo, 1993, translation made by the author)

There is a moment, into the recent history, in which cities and the architecture had begun to run into different roads. It could happen also into the best marriages: a moment they work together and a moment later a crisis begins and there are no more points of contacts. Maybe this kind of crisis happens also for cities and architecture: once, the second mother of the first and viceversa, the intellectual exchange was constant and fruitful.

The crisis of the contemporary city is nowadays evident, not only for experts, planners and architects, but also for the population and citizens that, into the city live and relate. The traffic congestion, the poor buildings quality and the carelessness of most of them, added to the poor air quality, the “dormitory” state of suburbs, not only in Italy but generally into the European context, make the contemporary urban environment unsafe and in crisis. The project of those environments and, overall, their management are often the result of economics and politics criteria rather than of the basics architectural dictates of balance, functionality and harmony. The same process’ actors are less and less architects, whose profession is relegated to exceptional situations or big works, having properties of selfish rather than of careful readings of urban environment signs.

In addition to those problems related to a general crisis of the architectural profession, at least as was defined into the last century, there are others additional difficulties that the contemporary city has to face:

- the European decrees, imposing a substantial reduction of emissions and an overall improvement of environmental and energetic urban conditions;

- the pressure of a market that, even if in a general crisis, tends to propose innovative technologies and new apps every day, not only for everyday life, but also for the life linked to the urban environment (just thinking about the geo-referencing app's or information apps on events and monuments description app’s, etc.);

- the presence of obsolete buildings and neighbourhoods, providing challenges and problems not only from the energetic point of view, but also from the security, network management and mobility points of view;

- the “dormitory” suburbs that are empty during the day because of the commuters’ conditions of the population;

- the constant and growing use of the land that, at the expense of rural suburbs, is addressed to increase the built environment, also if there isn’t a real demand of this;

- the constant and increasing resources demand, added to increasing population and urbanization;

- the computerization of society, slightly predictable and controllable, which allows a social life in close contact with social networks.

It’s into this context of economic and societal crisis and of widespread shortage of wellbeing and physical resources that the Smart City issue arises and feeds: a need, a try to give an answer and a resolution to all those problems (Wolfram, 2012).

There is a double meaning in which the Smart City issue could be read: on one hand the Smart City is a possible answer to those urban and social difficulties, entered in an important way into the international debate not only in the field of architecture, but mainly in the field of informatics and technology; on the other hand its big mediatisation and advertising process combined with the large use of the word in itself made by the politicians and all stakeholders, in general, produce a loss of substance and credibility. The Smart City challenge could become a dangerous subject, without an aware and conscious use of the terms, because it could allow the construction of projects that are all but “smart”.

The meanings of Smart City

The word smart born as a brand in the 1996, when a small car of Daimler AG group enters into the market: it was a small, cheep and technological car, in other terms a smart car (Masiero, 2014). So, from this moment, the word smart seems to be associated by the large public to object that are useful, simple to use, and, often, to object that could be used in different ways. It is probably in this moment that the smartness become to be conceived also as a urban dynamic that indicate an “intelligent” usability, but also a technological use of space and economics (Masiero, 2014). Few years before, in the 1992, the IBM company places on the market the first mobile phone able to collect all mobile phone functions with the management of personal data and other different possible functionalities (for example mails, games, computer programs, etc.): the definition of those functionalities is summarised in the term app. From this moment this instrument is named smartphone, because of its efficiency, but also for its small dimension and cheapness (Masiero 2014; Dall’O’, 2014). In addition, if we make a literature review we can find different meanings for the term smart in accordance with the main field in which they are considered and valued. For example, into the market language, the term shows a consumer’s need to have a simple product, user-friendly, maybe able to answer to different inputs in the best possible way. Into this context the term smart seems more endearing than the term intelligent. Also in Italy, smart is more used than the Italian term intelligente, showing a kind of rumour of the term, that, nowadays is became a real brand. Into the urban language, smart is usually associated to growth, in order to indicate a sort of strategic direction for the development and the urban growth, enhanced trough the use of innovative technologies. The aim of the smart growth is generally to address the urban development in a sustainable, economic and social process (Nam & Pardo, 2011). In conclusion, into the technological language, the term smart shows the device’s possibility to give an automatic answer to specific inputs, as happens in case of auto-management, auto-analysis, auto-protection or optimisation.

So, for semantic, it seems clearer that smart city could refers to a city having three main characteristics: be usable by citizens, in a user-friendly way; have a strategic project strategy with the aim to enhance citizens’ conditions; be able to self-manage by collecting data and act in consequence, in an automatic and planned way.

Smart City: utopia or reality?

The use of technological components as driver of change is not a unicuum into the history of big human evolutions. If we make a reflection back into the history it could be possible to observe important similarities: the role of innovation has always triggered deep changes. I think, for example, to those caused by the Industrial Revolution, or by the electricity invention or by the use of concrete into the constructions. But, not only innovations had had a definitive role into historic mutations, but also situations of crisis, of resource shortage, of environment problems (Hajer & Dassen, 2014).

At the end of Middle Age, a big intellectual excitement was made by the thought and the projects of ideal cities, also named utopian cities. The need to come out from a period of health, social, economic and political crisis leads different intellectuals to draw and design innovative kind of cities, in which the geometry, the hierarchy of the parts and the functionality were some of the main development lines, addicted to the concept of liveability cities. The quality and the harmony of the live inside those cities were the most important factors. I think, for example, to the Campanella’s or Moro’s works, but also to really built context, as well as Heliopolis, named also “Land of the Sun”, wanted in Italy by Cosimo I de’ Medici.

Maybe, the actual debate on Smart City issue is not so far from the ancient debate on ideal cities. Also if with different and evolved systems and methodologies, the debate is fed by a first crisis situation and the solution wants to “build” cities structured with functionality, easy management, and hierarchy features, even up to the definition of a “grid geometry”.

As the Campanella ideal city was built as a superposition of six rounds, in which each of them was the representation of a different knowledge sphere, the Smart City is commonly represented as a grid city, in which the building is dematerialised in favour of its grid and network function and as a grid point. Maybe those are stretches, but they are useful in order to emphasize how the smart city could be an idea, a model, a system aiming to find alternative solutions for the enhancement and evolution of the contemporary city.

Really the Smart City is only a utopia? What is sure is that the debate on the issue is highlighting different important factors:

- first of all the needs for the architecture to deal more and more with the technology and, overall, with a technology able to give innovations day by day and a technology aiming to define innovative building’s forms that don’t have to deny the architecture history but that have to be able to foster the innovative society needs;

- the importance of the governance, or the “good govern”, able to manage with attention and care resources, in collaboration with all the urban stakeholders (citizens, SMEs, services industries, financing actors, etc.);

- the role of the technology, that have to be more and more integrated into the urban context, and that have to make a better management and functionalities of their systems;

- the role of sustainability and energy management, more and more necessary for the survival of the human being;

- the needs that architects come more into the smart city debate in order to give an important contribution of utilitas, firmitas and venustas for the future development of the city.