Portraits of the World's Smart Cities

Bologna, the seventh largest city in Italy^[1] and capital of the Emilia-Romagna region, was recently named as one of the top three smart cities in the country. The city was praised for its decisions and actions to "bring together the quality of the environment, welfare policies and territorial innovation in an overall balance."^[2] This smart city portrait provides a summary of Bologna's strategy and vision of a citizen-centric collaborative future.

The Force of a Collaborative Persona

When it comes to citizen-inspired innovation, cities often face a problem. The problem is that outdated regulations and inflexible rules become barriers when citizens wish to improve a local park, increase pedestrian safety or make other changes in their community—even when such changes increase quality of life.^[3] However, the city of Bologna recognized opportunities to collaborate with citizens and improve neighborhoods and urban spaces.^[4]

Certain smart cities around the world are leading by example. By examining the solutions that are delivering the highest impact, these best practices can be more widely adopted to replicate their success.

Palo Alto’s Smart City Strategy

A comparatively small American city in the very center of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto has thrown itself into the smart city scene, founding a number of tech-driven projects to solve the problems of its 67,000 citizens.^[1] The first challenge to overcome, however, is its size: Palo Alto will need to pioneer smart resource management in order to fund the deployment of its smart city initiatives and the larger-scale implementation of any successful solutions.

Certain smart cities around the world are leading by example. By examining the solutions that are delivering the highest impact, these best practices can be more widely adopted to replicate their success.

This city portrait is in two parts. This first part describes the reorganization of the Seoul Municipal Government in order to empower citizens and create a stronger climate of citizen participation at all possible administrative levels. The second part takes a closer look at some of the specific smart solutions being implemented by the city.