Modern cities are becoming more and more representative of a changing world, where several trends are clearly emerging: constantly improving technological innovation, fast and chaotic urbanization, ageing population in Western countries and simultaneous demographic growth in emerging countries, global warming and environmental pollution are just some of them. Recent studies assess that by 2050 nearly 70% of the world population will live in cities, thus characterizing these urban conglomerations as the most energy-consuming entities (75% of the world energy by 2050) and as the main responsible for greenhouse gas emissions (up to 75% by 2030 and up to 80% by 2050) worldwide, as estimated by the International Energy Agency (IEA).
According to the city concept proposed by the ISO/IEC standards institution, “a city is a system of systems with unique history and set in a specific environmental and societal context” which needs “all the key city actors to work together, utilising all their resources, to overcome the challenges and grasp the opportunities that the city faces”. In such an extremely variegated context, therefore, cities must become “smarter” in order to improve their citizenship’s life quality and societal conditions, to exploit the available resources more effectively, to achieve the expected goals and fulfil the purposes set up by policy makers and, at the same time, without affecting or endangering the environment and by making all of this economically sustainable.
