Smart Planning and Intelligent Cities: A New Cambrian Explosion

We live in the society of knowledge, creativity and innovation: true anti-cyclical factors with respect to the crisis that has overrun the traditional development protocols and that requires powerful processes of creation and spread of knowledge. The true innovation has no boundaries, it has to affect each aspect of institutions and enterprises and operates as a mutagen of society, requiring a paradigm shift. Startups, fablabs, co-workers, makers and smart citizens have given rise to a global urban movement and most cities now have a sizeable colony: a true smart ecosystem for improving social innovation. Between them they are home to hundreds of accelerators and thousands of smart places and co-working spaces, and this ecosystem must be highly interconnected and integrated in a renewed urban metabolism driven by more adequate planning paradigms and tools. The combination of technological innovation and urban planning, however, is not only instrumental and determines changes within the community and its territory too. The “Third Industrial Revolution” and the gradual implementation of e-society have made it possible to delegate an increasing number of physical and intellectual tasks, even very sophisticated, to technology. In fact, the goods and ideas produced are increasingly less tied to a scheduled place and time, in terms of quality and quantity; the workplace is no longer an independent variable and time is no longer rigidly synchronized, especially as far as the intellectual work is concerned. The spreading of sensors, smart devices, electronic networks and urban life apps has created a proper urban cyber-physical space, consisting of the constant interaction between physical components and digital networks, tangible actions and intangible feedback. Smart cities are components of a new urban organism able to rethink the development and to encourage a “creative explosion”, leading smartness-based initiatives as part of a European post-metropolitan vision.