Smart City, Urban Performance and Energy

Over the last few years there has been a growing demand for more liveable cities, and the notion of “urban smartness” is thus attracting the attention of both policy-makers and academicians. Among many different definitions, the “Smart City” by Giffinger et al. (2007), a functional model with six drivers of urban smartness (economy, environment, governance, living, mobility and people), appears as the most widely recognized. Within this context, increasing attention has been devoted to the “Energy” dimension concerning renewable energy, energy consumption, and energy policy. The present chapter reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the relation between smartness and energy at the urban scale, specifically focusing on the 103 Italian NUTS3 province capitals. It mainly investigates how and to what extent the province capitals differ in terms of “energy” attributes. The chapter is structured into four sections. The introduction is followed by a literature review of the theoretical and empirical studies defining the concept of Smart City and its characteristics, with a specific focus on the “energy” role in a Smart City. Section three presents data and descriptive statistics exploring the role played by “energy” within the 103 Italian NUTS3 province capitals. The last section focuses on discussion and further research.