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Platforms, Apps, Solutions
The paper “Digital Transformation of City Ecosystems: Platforms Shaping Engagement and Externalities across Vertical Markets’ by Nicos Komninos, Christina Kakderi, Anastasia Panori, Antonio Collado and Ilektra Papadaki analyses the role of digital platforms in the construction of ecosystems, towards the digital transformation of diverse contexts. It is based on lessons learned from Digital Cities Challenge (DCC) initiative, implemented between October 2017 and June 2019.
This paper is following the EU target of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Near Zero Energy and Positive Energy communities are expected to play a significant part of the strategy that will be followed. Within this context, the authors aim to investigate the feasibility of a new-built positive energy neighborhood and the retrofit of an existing neighborhood to near zero energy performance in the city of Alexandroupolis, Greece. The study may act as a roadmap for the uptake and development of positive energy and near-zero energy communities in Greek Cities, similar to Alexandroupolis. Furthermore, it can be used as a decision support tool for policy makers, when assessing alternative options towards the path of decarbonization of EU economy by 2050.
Examining the changing nature of cities in the face of smart technology, this book studies key new challenges and capabilities defined by the Internet of Things, data science, blockchain and artificial intelligence. It argues that using algorithmic logic alone for automation and optimisation in modern smart cities is not sufficient, and analyses the importance of integrating this with strong participatory governance and digital platforms for community action. The book was edited by Nicos Komninos, Director, URENIO Research and Christina Kakderi, Department of Spatial Planning and Development, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.
This article explores whether smart city policy and sustainability outcomes are intertwined, through a systematic literature review. The review highlights limitations of smart cities to achieve sustainability and reveals that cities cannot be truly smart without being sustainable first. Overall, authors advocate the sustainable and knowledge-based development of smart cities and emphasize on the need for a post-anthropocentric urban turnaround for sustainability.
This article “Smart innovative cities: The impact of Smart City policies on urban innovation”, the authors look at the urban innovation impact of smart city policies. Based on the observation that there is no statistical evidence suggesting the existence of a positive association between the implementation of Smart City policies and urban economic performance, the authors try to shed light on this issue. To work on this issue, they collected and analysed data on 309 European metropolitan areas regarding smart city features, smart city policy intensity and urban innovation outputs.
In this book “The Smart Enough City: Putting Technology in Its Place to Reclaim Our Urban Future”, Ben Green focus on how big data, AI and machine learning could promote more efficient and livable cities, without sacrificing civil liberties and social justice. Warning us against the exclusively technical view of urban life, he underlines the need to recognize the complexity of urban life rather than see the city as something to optimize. The book is part of the Strong Ideas series, published with the support of the MIT Libraries.
This article, written by A.-V. Anttiroiko and N. Komninos, focuses on how smart technologies are transforming public services. More specifically, the authors discuss the preconditions for the development of public smart city services by grounding their design on service-dominant logic. Its title is “Smart Public Services: Using Smart City and Service Ontologies in Integrative Service Design” and it is part of the book “Setting Foundations for the Creation of Public Value in Smart Cities.
