Creative City 3.0: smart cities for the urban age

In current financial, economical and political crisis, with the progressive downgrading of the States and the world’s GDPs dropping, the strong flows of financial, social and relational capital that powered urban regeneration over the last fifteen years are no longer available to be tapped in on in an indiscriminate manner as it seems was the case until just a few years ago. The most dynamic cities in the near future will no longer be those that are able to attract urban projects driven by the real estate market, or hedge funds, but the cities that have extensive cultural and identifying resources and that are able to use them as the basis for creating new culture and new urban value. Today, within the “smart cities” scenario, the paradigm of the creative city calls for a further evolutive leap forward – the third – because it is capable of producing multiplication and regeneration effects on urban development. The Creative City 3.0 is therefore no longer simply a category used for interpretation among economists and sociologists or an urban planning challenge, but rather calls on decision-makers to take action and demands a vigorous commitment on the part of town planners and architects, as the development of nations and wellbeing of the community will only be measured according to the cities that tackle the financial global change in a creative manner. The urban century in which we live is not filled by only “hyper cities”, but also shows the emergence of medium metropolises and networks of micropolises. Especially in Italy, the network of the “innovative cities” is supporting by middle cities, the “small capitals” that produce alternative visions – founded in quality and powered by culture – to that of the explosion of megalopolises. One commitment that cannot be put off by governors and managers, planners and designers, promoters and communicators, entrepreneurs and investors, will be that of creating dynamic, vibrant cities that generate new urban values and multipliers of invested capital. These cities must be places people want to live, work, and train in and get to know, productive places that attract investments. In European vision, the evolution of creative cities towards a network of “smart cities” able to redefine the urban age identity, is founded on three competitive factors: Culture, Communication, and Cooperation. Inside this evolutive background, with an highly dynamic of change, it has become necessary to understand and evaluate how cities and territories are changing, convinced that it is not only necessary to recognize the role of the “creative agents” in the development of the cities, but also the commitment to this urban creativity being one of the primary factors in the evolution of communities and economic development. The city must once again become a powerful “generator of value” starting with its own spatial, social, cultural and relational resources, able to transform the global network in local resources.