How the "smart city" model matches equity issues. A comparative study of Stcokholm and Torino.

The first definition on smartness has been, somehow, on a continental basis: in may 2000 The European Council met in Lisbon and the item on the agenda was how to develop a strategy for bringing the European countries into a knowledge-based economy (Benner 2003).
It was within the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET Plan, 22^nd November 2007) that European Union decided the creation of 30 ‘smart cities’ to be selected by 2020 and granting totally 15 billions euros of European funds (Repubblica, 12/02/2012). The “Launch Conference of the Smart Cities and Communities Initiative” took place the 21^st June 2011.
The first call provided 80 million euros for those cities promoting renovations for public and private real estate and energy network. The financing was destined to those projects intended to reduce building energetic consumption, to increase the use of renewable energies and to promote new eco-friendly way of transport in and out the urban area.
Torino in December 2011 answered the call and created the foundation ‘Torino Smart City’ for a sustainable development, a coordinating public body involving the Polytechnic, the University of Torino, the Chamber of Commerce and municipalities from the metropolitan area, foundations and National and local enterprises, too. Since then many initiatives have taken placed in the city such as the Digital Experience Festival (25^th May-2^nd June 2012), the Smart City Festival (23^rd May-5^th June 2012), the ITN Expo 2012 (27^th-28^th September 2012) and the Internet Governance forum Italia 2012 (18^th-20^th October 2012).
Only few months ago (Directorial Decree 5/07/2012 n. 391/Ric) the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research (MIUR) made resources of total 655,5 millions euros available for the presentation of “design ideas for Smart Cities and Communities and Social Innovation”
Many initiatives and calls for competitive bidding at the national and communitarian level are taking place (especially in Italy) and they are all somehow linked to “Europe 2020”, a strategy for jobs and smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, which is based on five EU headline targets to be reached within 2020:
- 75% of the population aged 20-64 should be employed
- 3% of the EU’s GDP should be invested in R&D
- Greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced by 20% compared to 1990. The share of renewable sources in final energy consumption should be increased t 20%
- The share of early school leavers should be under 10% and at least 40% of 30-34 years old should have completed tertiary or equivalent education
- Poverty should be reduced by lifting at least 20 million people out of the risk of poverty or social exclusion
This list regards many of the variables monitored by the Eurostat database at the national level; unfortunately there are not developed universal and shared indexes in order to measure the degree of ‘ smartness’ of a city.
However, for the 6 dimensions identified it is possible to find different factors shaping each dimension; for each factor, then, it is possible to measure the relative empirical indicator.
Our purpose, however, was not to directly collect data respectively in Stockholm and Torino; the time and costs needed for such a research would be further beyond our possibility. We will just focus on some second-hand data, selecting, among comparable ones, those we found interesting for our study.