The “sustainable city”, the new 21st century city?

The new 21st century city designed following sustainability criteria, and thought in green?

I have been perceiving for some time ago a change of trend to establish the criteria for developing the 21st century city. After reading several articles about urban planning I have the feeling that technological issues are leaving their place to another topics under the “sustainability” tag. Consequently the 21st century city is moving from the concept of “smart city” to the concept of “sustainable city”.

As a technologist I would like to think that this evolution is given by the fact that the use of ICT technologies is consolidated enough in the contemporary society,

Why intelligent cities (III). Urban environment reasons

Around the social and economic activities of any city is the urban environment.

The urban environment is conformed by all those conditions surrounding the development of social and economic activities in cities. These conditions are related to their state of conservation and maintenance, the quality of the air in the space they are settled down, as well as the easiness of travelling within them. In this block four reasons that justify the adoption of the concept of smart city from the point of view of the urban environment are presented.

An image to the concept of smart city

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, in fact any idea, no matter how complex it is, can be easily conveyed with just a single image. Surely anyone of us did visual schemes in our student days to learn the concepts of any subject. Images go beyond languages, for instance, a red octagon on a street or road would make us stop immediately, regardless the text written into it. There are even commercial brands that exploit the power of images and replace their trademark name by their logo, which becomes a worldwide recognized symbol which identifies them universally.

The huge quantity of concepts involved in the smart city can result in a mesh. Image generated at WorldClouds.com

In this post I would like to share with you an image for the concept of smart city, my own vision based on the knowledge I have gained on this field, and which has allowed me to order in certain way the thematic complexity behind the construction and management of the 21st century city.