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,

Smart City Expo World Congress 2016. Cities for Citizens

© Fira de Barcelona, 2016

A new edition of the Smart City Expo World Congress, one of the most important international events for the smart cities industry, will open its doors in Barcelona in one month. Another three side events, dedicated to the promotion of sustainability and the efficient management of resources in urban areas, will take place in this edition: the Circular Economy European Summit, the iwater and the European Utility Week.

The slogan for this year’s edition is short, but it says lots of things. Cities for citizens or, equivalently, all the actions carried out in the 21st century city

Why intelligent cities (II). Social reasons

The general use of digital devices connected to the Internet has caused the shift of the society of the 21st century to the digital domain. Image by Roman Drits at Barn Images.

The society of the 21st century has new communication channels more agile, ubiquitous and immediate. In this sense citizens are no longer passive subjects and become active sources of information, which has allowed the development of the highly collaborative nature of today’s society. On the other side, people living in the urban spaces of the 21st century appreciate the fact of dispose of exclusive spaces for them as persons, as well as the ability to access to the daily basic services safely, no depending on a motorized vehicle.

In the first block of this series, four reasons to adopt the concept of smart city from the citizens’ point of view are introduced.

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.