From SMART Cities to SMART City-Regions: Reflections and Proposals

The paper introduce the rapid development of the “smart city” concept and its different meanings through a critical review of main bibliographical references: from the original concept of intelligent, digital and creative city, to the recent one of human smart city and SENSEable city, until to the integrated approach, who reads the “smartness” as condition for a continuous and ongoing process of growth and innovation [35]. In Europe, and also in Italy, the application of this concept has been mainly restricted to the urban scale, lacking a broader strategic and territorial vision. Starting with some reflections already developed by the authors on the subject [36] , the article proposes a change of scale in the approach to the topic of the “smart city” (from urban scale to wide scale), which implies not only a conceptual transition (Smart city to Smart city-region), but the definition of completely different models and strategies. The analysis considers the key role that the Europe’s Growth Agenda recognizes to Regions in the development of new growth dynamic for Europe based on the definition of smart specialization strategies, and focuses on importance of identifying an Italian approach - an Italian road map - to smart cities, based on local potentialities. Finally, in the perspective of a new mutual balance between City and Region is presented the experience (to be defined) of the Northern global city-region Milano-Torino.