Francesco Molinari

Human Smart Cities: A New Vision for Redesigning Urban Community and Citizen’s Life

The Smart City is by now a model for the application of Future Internet services and infrastructure towards radical improvements of urban services in terms of efficiency and sustainability. In recent experiences in this area, however, a new vision is emerging that enriches the original concept with the human perspective, as gained through the application of citizen-centric and participatory approaches to the co-design and development of Smart City services. Indeed, it is becoming clear that “smartness” alone—sensors, metres, infrastructures—risks placing the citizen outside of the process, as a user who never takes the kind of ownership of the services that can only be ensured by engagement in their co-design from the very start. This paper explores the emergent model for Human Smart Cities, its methodological components, and the “softer” features of “smartness”—such as clarity of vision, citizen empowerment, participation, etc.—which can complement the technological drive of the underlying urban infrastructure. Conclusions are set out in terms of implications and potential for EU policy renewal in the context of Europe 2020.

Empowering Citizens with Open Data by Urban Hackathons

Empowering citizens to make meaningful use of open data is a challenge somehow less central than others to public sector information disclosure policies. The latter are typically focused on promoting business innovations and economic activities in general (first goal) or increasing transparency in government and/or political inclusion (second goal). Based on the interim results of an ongoing EU funded project, which has run five independent Hackathons in as many European cities during the year 2016, we note that the time is ripe for establishing alternative ways of citizen integration in public service (re)design processes that may act as a sort of accelerators for some key, social and political, dynamics of change.

A Triplet Under Focus: Innovation, Design and the City

Three key concept domains are considered and explored in a unitary framework. They are: innovation, the only possible response to global crises, aiming at transforming behaviours and practices towards systemic changes and transition; design, a way of creatively conceiving, developing and driving forward new practices for undertaking large scale transitions; and cities, seen as the environments where problems present themselves in the most socially relevant way and at the same time as key opportunities for testing and adopting forms of innovation which target global challenges. The chapter positions the three key concepts in relation to the most relevant academic references and to the current debate on innovation processes.

Innovation and Design

The focus of design studies has shifted from a product-centric perspective to a perspective in which value is defined by and co-created with the consumer, rather than embedded in the output. The reasoning hence focuses on the interplay between innovation and design processes. Moving from an earlier conceptualization of design-driven innovation, the attempt is to define the space of interaction between the different components of the innovation process. In this way a 3D innovation space can be sketched where different practices and experiences can be mapped. Through this exercise the key hypothesis of this work is empowered: no innovation is possible without design.

Putting Serious Games in Context: The Energy Efficiency of Buildings Case

The paper invites to a reflection on the way energy efficiency (serious) games – i.e. those addressing the issue of behavioral change in individual energy consumption – are and should be designed to better fulfil the goals assigned to Demand Side Management programs, notably run by governments and utilities, with special respect to public buildings (i.e. other than private homes). We introduce three contextual design goals and contend that more can be done to exploit the potential of gamification in the domain at hand.

The Frugal Government Concept Revisited

Revisiting the frugal government concept is the aim of this chapter, which first provides a working definition and then discusses the renewed importance of it for a government modernization agenda. Frugal basically means parsimonious (rather than simply efficient or effective) in the use of resources, inclusive and participatory with both civil society and individual citizens, and open to public service restructuring with and by the active contribution of beneficiary people and communities. The concept is further analyzed in its implications for service renewal in relation with the dynamics of personal engagement, collective learning, and behavioral change.