Sharing practices in the digital age: inclusive processes and new citizens in the intelligent city

The smart city model is increasingly becoming a new life approach, based on inclusive processes and practices involving changes related to urban challenges. The smart city drivers (energy, mobility, economy, social…) are really linked together through the digital communication infrastructure, which connects everything in one all-inclusive logic. Actors and users of these transformations are citizens, people with their own smart phones, smart sensors of the receptive and senseable city. The real time monitoring of urban situations through maps (made by GIS) becomes another way to read the new urban functions. The possibilities generated by digital technologies, in terms of services, offer a different perspective in which citizens relate to the theme of mobility. It is thus possible, almost immediately, through specialized Apps to know the traffic situation of a city at a given time and to program accordingly a shift or a different way to move. Another application would be to know the current parking situation and program the access in relation to available slots, saving time and resources and reducing the traffic flows. The sharing is another major issue that runs through all the themes of smart city: in fact nowadays one can share everything, a house, a car or a bike, an object but also working spaces (co-working) and also energy urban services. Sharing includes different themes of smart city: from objects (IoT) to spaces up to urban services. In USA there are a lot of open projects and work in progress experiences. In the State of Oregon – for example - there is a digital platform for the rental of heavy road maintenance equipment. In the State of Washington there is Wikispeed (as in Wikipedia) an organization aiming at designing and assembling vehicles. The goal would be to spread the design and eventually construction of vehicles on the web ultimately leading to a single manifacturer composed of many microfactories distributed all over the world. The theme of sharing becomes a must and a duty of the city of the future. Even in issues related to energy, the formation of purchasing groups through an aggregator (Address project), that interfaces the energy market and consumers, falls into this new dimension of social sharing. The smart city reinvents itself and citizens must be prepared to innovate practices and processes: the article makes a survey of some new and recent examples of sharing practices in Europe and in other places of the world.

Il modello smart city sta diventando un nuovo approccio di vita basato su processi inclusivi e pratiche innovative che coinvolgono cambiamenti correlati alle sfide delle città. I drivers (energia, mobilità, economia,etc..) della smart city sono realmente collegati dalla componente ICT che connette tutto in una logica omni-inclusiva. Attori e utilizzatori finali di queste trafsormazioni sono i cittadini, persone che con i loro smart phones diventano sensori della città recettiva e sensibile. La città in tempo reale viene analizzata attraverso mappe prodotte con sistemi GIS offrendo un altro modo di leggere le nuove funzioni urbane. E’ possibile quasi immediatamente attraverso App dedicate conoscere la situazione del traffico in tempo reale di una città programmando spostamenti. Altro aspetto rilevante della smart city è la condivisione: oggi infatti condividiamo una macchina, una casa, un barca ma anche luoghi di lavoro (co-working). La smart city si reinventa e i cittadini devono essere pronti a innovare processi e metodi. L’articolo traccia una disamina di alcuni nuovi e recenti esempi di pratiche di condivisione in Europa e in altre città del mondo.