Abstract
Smart mobility is linked to the ability to create transport efficiency in cities. Indeed, the increase of smart mobility within cities has a positive impact on citizens. The ability to create new projects related to smart mobility and its ability to involve the ecosystem, especially citizens, is part of urban planning in many countries and carries out this work. This study presents the urban projects in some Mediterranean cities and their impact on the externalities of smart mobility. The results show that the deployment of smart mobility has a positive impact on urban development and there is remarkable progress in connecting citizens, especially in cities where smart mobility is the result of investments in sustainable development. Based on the latest projects in smart cities in the Mediterranean and the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, the study will help to evaluate urban projects but also to understand how cities increase the well-being of citizens.
TopIntroduction
Nowadays, cities can be characterized as places of great change, facing challenges at multiple levels (Pego and Matos, 2019). Smart cities use technologies and data to increase efficiency, economic development, sustainability and quality of life for citizens in urban areas (Lai et al., 2020:290). A smart city consists of smart infrastructure, smart administration, smart policy, smart transportation, smart healthcare, smart agriculture, smart education, smart economy, smart environment, smart industry, smart energy, and smart feedback mechanisms that help to truly implement the concept of smart city ecosystem (Ahad et al., 2020:59). Smart city is a new and innovative concept due to the complexity of urban environment and the new challenges related to mobility, population, natural environment and other social aspects (NEMÞANU et al., 2016:427). The theme of smart cities is the development of a wide range of activities to optimize the relationship between citizens and services. This means that smart cities are equipped with capacities to satisfy citizens. The smart city idea refers to new ways of organizing urban functions and urban life, which are assumed to shift production and consumption from global to local, production from competitive to collaborative, and the economy from a shareholder to a multiple stakeholder perspective (Öberg et al., 2017). In another sense, the performance of a city today depends not only on the endowment of hard infrastructure (physical capital), but increasingly also on the availability and quality of knowledge communication and social infrastructure (human and social capital) (Caragliu et al., 2011:65). In recent decades, the Urban Living Labs approach, in conjunction with the Smart City concept, has emerged as a way to conduct practical research with the various urban actors involved in co-innovation activities to address a wide range of social, economic, environmental and technological challenges (Pego and Matos, 2019). The indicators that emerge from the concept of smart city are: Demography, Social Aspects, Economic Aspects, Civic Engagement, Training and Education, Environment, Travel and Transport, Information Society, Culture and Leisure (Caragliu et al., 2011). Mobility in cities has become an important issue facing new challenges through the application of technology, digital information, multimodal mobility and infrastructure (Aletà et al., 2017). This means that there are mobility solutions for smart cities, namely reducing mobility costs, reducing air pollution, reducing noise pollution, reducing traffic congestion, increasing safety and improving the speed of mobility (Orlowski and Romanowska, 2019:118).Considering the emerging private-public initiatives in smart cities, the proposal of this chapter is to present the results of research on the impact of smart mobility projects on the innovation and development of smart cities in relation to the concepts of digital services, technologies, transport efficiency and intermodal mobility.
In this research, the following question was asked: How can the mobility projects promote the externalities in smart cities?
The research question was answered by achieving the research objectives:
- 1.
consolidating the concepts relevant to the study based on a literature review on smart cities and smart mobility.
- 2.
identifying the role of mobility projects and their impact in smart cities.
- 3.
identification and selection of some mobility projects to be included in the case study.
- 4.
analyse the externalities of mobility projects in terms of citizen wellbeing, mobility labs, mobility equity and low carbon emissions.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Ecosystems: Adoptive management, integrated management, upgrading and promotion of economic activities, regional and cross-border cooperation and coordination; complex relationships between actors or entities whose functional objective is to enable technological development and innovation; management systems that use natural resources.
Eco-Innovation: Innovation that originates from ecosystems. Eco-innovation is related to eco-technology. The goal of eco-innovation is to solve environmental problems and become more competitive. Eco-innovation is also related to smart cities.
Urban Development: Concept that refers to the capacity of infrastructures and services created by the city. Urban development is also a network between the main sectors in cities, such as renewable energy, information technology, services, and mobility.
Smart Governance: The process of governance based on the use of ICT tools and the Internet to deliver information and public services, on communication and collaboration between government and citizens, and on the principles of good governance.
Entrepreneurship: This is a complex process that stimulates the creation of businesses. Entrepreneurship is associated with regional business planning. However, taking into account the positive externalities of employment, economies of scale and open market for services or products, entrepreneurship can be associated with a cluster as a cluster establishes complementary relationships with another sector.
Smart Mobility: Urban mobility that optimizes better use of transport in terms of efficiency and capacity of resources. Smart mobility is linked to the ability to create positive externalities in cities.
Eco-Technologies: Technologies developed on the basis of green economy, smart cities or ecosystems. Eco-technologies are environmentally friendly and tend to be more competitive than traditional technologies because they use digital processes.
Smart Cities: Urban infrastructures in which the concept of ecosystems is implemented. The concept applies to a green, ecological, and smart city based on sustainability, economic added value, and prosperity. Smart cities are also linked to innovation, knowledge, digital economy, and smart governance.
Welfare: The stage at which individuals achieve satisfaction when using goods or services. When an individual's cost of living is related to goods and services that meet all needs. Welfare is also related to environmental friendliness and innovation that allow individuals to have a good standard of living.
Smart Externalities: Externalities created by the interconnectedness of environment, services, and technologies.