Oliver Gassmann - Smart cities : introducing digital innovation to cities

The concept of the smart city promises to solve many of the urgent issues that accompany progressive urbanization overwhelming traffic congestion, strains on energy and water systems, delinquency, inadequate housing, and the lack of social inclusion through digitalization. Smart cities are therefore highly relevant for political decision makers in municipalities, administrative agencies, and nonprofit and civic organizations. Moreover, smart or ecosystem cities offer great potential for countless corporations in the fields of information technology, real estate, telecommunications, energy supply, auto-mobility, sensor systems, and data analytics. Accordingly, it is not surprising that numerous highly innovative companies, including IBM, Cisco, Telekom, Siemens, Toshiba, and Google, along with public utilities around the world, are actively investing in smart city development. Additionally, many startups are concurrently entering the Internet of Things (IoT) and energy fields, placing competitive pressure on established firms.

The social and political demands of the energy revolution, combined with the auspicious possibilities of an interconnected yet decentralized world within the framework of IoT, are accelerating the transformation of urban centers toward becoming smart cities. Despite the exploitation of existing potentials by lighthouse (i.e., pilot) cities, such as Barcelona, Munich, Lyon, and Vienna, most municipalities have pursued smart city opportunities only to a limited extent thus far. As a result, the discrepancies between leading smart cities and less ambitious cities are widening. The need for action is frequently discerned, yet the most appropriate path of action often remains unclear.

Various important questions about smart city development are still unanswered. What are the core elements of smart cities? What steps should be followed in building them? Where does the greatest potential lie? What is the ideal starting point? What procedures have other cities applied? What can be learned from pioneers in the field? Are the successes of the greenfield approaches applied by Asian smart cities transferable to other parts of the world? What methods and tools can be usefully implemented? What business models have participating firms used? How can diverse stakeholders be effectively integrated?

This book answers these questions in the form of solution paths, accompanied by design concepts and success factors. It covers the following main topics:

• the future of cities;
• an overview of smart cities;
• smart city management model;
• smart city lighthouses;
• guidelines for smart city transformation; and
• tools for making your city a smart city.

Cities today face tremendous challenges concerning livability, mobility, energy, and communication. These challenges are forcing them to reconsider their former self-conception, their functionality, and their service offerings. However, cities that focus actively on their objectives and on the requisite digital transformation can imagine and realize entirely new living spaces. To help them achieve this goal, they should learn from the experiences of pioneers in the field, which we call lighthouse cities. Urban centers can orient their strategies around the solutions and experiences of these role model cities, so as to design and execute their own situation-specific, customized transformation. These smart city management models serve as reference frames that provide basic fundamentals, offer recommendations for action, and contribute to the synchronization of the transformation process. The models are especially valuable as orientation tools introducing all stakeholders in a city or region to the smart city concept.

This book is based on ongoing research undertaken by the Institute of Technology Management (ITEM) and the Center for Energy Innovation, Governance, and Investment at the University of St. Gallen. Worthy of particular mention are the European Union project Smarter Together, the national energy research program comprising eight Swiss Competence Centers for Energy Research (SCCERs), and numerous projects of the ITEM with partners from the spheres of politics, administration, and the economy.