Smart Cities, Future Internet and Living Labs - Shaping the Smart Cities agenda
On January 25th, ENoLL was present at the FIREBALL final conference. This one-day workshop invited speakers from EUROCITIES, FIRE (Future Internet Research & Experimentation), the Smart City Portfolio CIP projects and ENoLL (European Network of Living Labs) and European Commission to present views and results to open up the discussion on shaping the future ‘Smart Cities’ agenda, starting from the needs of the cities, their citizens and partner organisations. In addition the workshop created new linkages and enhance cooperation between different constituencies interested in Smart City development in order to help formulate policies for future problem solving and strategic actions.
Report of the workshop will be published shortly.
Background
The concept of “smart cities” has attracted considerable attention in the context of urban development policies for creating more inclusive, sustainable and competitive cities. At the same time the Internet as an enabler of city services is becoming more and more important for urban development while cities are increasingly assuming a critical role as drivers of innovation in such areas as health, inclusion, environment and business as more people and devices will be connected to the Future Internet than today. Cities and spaces will be connected and smarter, exploiting the Future Internet to organise, optimise, and deliver on promises to citizens, both as creative professionals and as ‘prosumers’. At the same time the Future Internet will be, even more than now, a critical infrastructure for the public sector, citizens and business and move from being the Internet of technology into the Internet of content, things and people. In order to tackle the real problems of cities new thinking is needed, which is capable of grasping the big picture, including the interrelationships among all the factors underlying them. Achieving systemic and sustainable innovation for the future society and to make future cities a good place to live and work requires much broader, more collaborative and innovative approaches.
