INTRODUCTION

Smart cities in the innovation age

Smart cities have become a landmark in urban planning. They are the result of
knowledge-intensive and creative strategies aiming at enhancing the socio-economic,
ecological, logistic and competitive performance of cities. Such smart cities are
based on a promising mix of human capital (e.g. skilled labor force), infrastructural
capital (e.g. high-tech communication facilities), social capital (e.g. intense and open
network linkages) and entrepreneurial capital (e.g. creative and risk-taking business
activities).
Smart cities are supposed to be supported by appropriate and trustworthy
governance structures and by open-minded, creative people, who through a joint
effort are able to increase local productivity, the sine qua non for accelerated eco-
nomic growth. In smart cities, the productivity rise is higher than the rise in local
problems.
Clearly, smart cities are an ideal-typical urban constellation, but in reality
we observe various smart appearances in urban systems, such as creative
districts, smart urban villages, or sustainable knowledge-based urban spaces. The
background concept of smart cities is based on the fact that cities house, in
principle, a variety of creative talents and are able to offer novel and sustainable
solutions. The agglomeration advantages generated in modern urban constella-
tions are critical parameters for exploiting the potential benefits of innovative
urban spaces.
Smart cities have become a fashionable model in urban architecture,
planning and governance, but what are the practical lessons from the actual
performance of smart cities? The present special issue of Innovation addresses in
particular the feasibility of smart city concepts by presenting a series of applied
studies on the success conditions and implications of smart city strategies and
ideas.
The first contribution in this special issue, written by Andrea Caragliu and
Chiara Del Bo, presents a comparative benchmark analysis of the growth per-
formance of various smart cities in Europe. The authors conclude that this
analysis points in the direction of the critical importance of space-specific
characteristics in shaping the economic benefits of smart urban qualities, providing
a justification for place-based public policies that account for local characteristics.
They also identify different clusters with respect to the impacts of smartness on
urban performance and wealth, highlighting the need for geographically differ-
entiated policy actions.
Next, the learning aspects of smart cities are analyzed by Mark Deakin, who
interprets intelligent cities as facilitators and communities of practice for designing
and implementing e-government services. In his contribution he identifies how the
growing interest in intelligent cities has led universities to explore the opportunities
Innovation The European Journal of Social Science Research
Vol. 25, No. 2, June 2012, 9395
ISSN 1351-1610 print/ISSN 1469-8412 online
# 2012 ICCR Foundation
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13511610.2012.660331
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communities of practice (CoPs) offer to industry in order to become smart
providers of online services.
The assessment and modeling of the performance of smart cities is an intriguing
research challenge that is addressed by Patrizia Lombardi, Silvia Giordano, Hend
Farouh and Wael Yousef. The authors propose a novel research agenda for the
development of a testing exercise with the participation of main city stakeholders,
offering a reflexive learning opportunity for cities to measure what options exist to
improve their performances.
In a subsequent article, Roberta Capello, Andrea Caragliu and Camilla Lenzi
raise the question of whether a high innovation degree in cities is related to the local
presence of knowledge-intensive services. They argue that the linkage between the
presence of cities in the region and their innovative performance is mediated by
the urban industrial structure. In fact, a positive correlation is likely to exist between
the presence of large cities in a region and its innovative performance. Such a re-
lationship could also depend on the presence of knowledge-intensive services, rather
than on advanced manufacturing activities.
Cities are part of a broad national or global network, both physical and virtual.
The issue of smart networked cities is conceptually and empirically investigated by
Emmanouil Tranos and Drew Gertner, who argue that the local policy agenda and
more specifically smart city initiatives should be informed about and address the
structure of the transnational urban network, as this can affect the efficiency of such
local policies.
Smart cities are most likely well equipped with an advanced knowledge
infrastructure, which may induce important benefits. Marina van Geenhuizen offers
in her study a new perspective on the open innovation potential provided by
university spin-off firms. She examines a particular category of high-tech firms,
university spin-offs, and highlights resources that are missing and the level of
openness in learning networks to gain these resources. The vitality of modern cities is
nowadays strongly influenced by cultural diversity. In this context, the new urban
entrepreneurs usually coined ethnic entrepreneurs play a prominent role. Mediha
Sahin, Alina Todiras, Peter Nijkamp and Soushi Suzuki present findings on the
efficiency profiles of ethnic entrepreneurs in Dutch cities. These entrepreneurs
appear to move increasingly to high-skilled segments of urban business life, offering
a boost to the local economy.
Finally, Peter Nijkamp, Karima Kourtit and Daniel Arribas present a study on
the relative differences among smart cities by analyzing a multi-dimensional set of
urban attributes related to smart cities. The analytical tool set employed here is based
on self-organizing mapping analysis. The authors conclude that the most relevant
insight that can be drawn from this exercise is the idea that some cities (actually most
of them) have converged, that is, they have become more similar over the
observation period we have been looking at, while others have become outliers in
positions where they were not found before.
This special issue offers new horizons on the functioning and positing of smart
cities. It turns out that there is a need for a conceptual clarity of smart cities, that is
evidence-based and appropriate for applied quantitative analysis and comparison.
94 K. Kourtit and P. Nijkamp
Next, it is also evident that policy should exploit the knowledge-intensive and
creative potential of smart cities.
Karima Kourtit and Peter Nijkamp
Department of Spatial Economics,
VU University, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
Email addresses: kkourtit@vu.nl and p.nijkamp@vu.nl
Innovation The European Journal of Social Science Research 95
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