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Il dibattito sul concetto di smart city è stato ampliato in questi ultimi anni. Per identificare i fattori della smart city, alcuni studiosi sottolineano il ruolo di alcuni elementi, tra cui lo sviluppo economico, il contesto favorevole alle imprese, la sostenibilità ambientale, l'innovazione sociale, il processo di informazione e conoscenza e infine il capitale umano e sociale. Da questo punto di vista, il concetto di smart city è relazionato sia all'efficienza urbana che al benessere dei cittadini sotto l'ombrello comune dell'uso di tecnologie appropriate. Anche le imprese e le istituzioni hanno contribuito a questo dibattito. Queste ultime hanno unito il concetto di smartness con la capacità di utilizzare le ICT (tecnologie dell'informazione e della comunicazione) quale strumento per rafforzare la crescita economica. In particolare, la strategia europea 2020 focalizzata su una crescita sostenibile, inclusiva e intelligente considera le città come motori per lo sviluppo e le città intelligenti come un modello normativo per la città contemporanea. Pertanto, come misurare la smartness sta diventando sempre più fondamentale. Partendo dall'analisi degli indicatori di smartness sviluppati negli ultimi anni, l'obiettivo del lavoro è verificare quanto questi indici siano in grado di supportare la strategia Europa 2020 nel raggiungere i propri obiettivi, e nel diventare così uno strumento politico efficace. ; The debate about the smart city concept has been widened during these last years. In literature, to define this concept differ- ent ways have been proposed where enthusiastic positions have been counterposed by critical and negative views. To identify the smart city factors, some scholars highlight the role of some issues among others economic development, business-friendly context, environmental sustainability, social innovation, information and knowledge process, and finally human and social capital. In this light, the smart city concept is related to both urban efficiency and citizens' wellbeing under the common umbrella of the use of appropriate technologies. Even firms and institutions have contributed to this debate. The latter have joined smartness with the ability of using ICT (Information and Communication Technology) as instrument to strengthen economic growth. Particularly, European Strategy 2020 focusing on a sustainable, inclusive and smart growth considers cities as engines for the development and smart cities as a normative model for the contemporary city. Therefore, how to measure smartness is becoming more and more crucial. Starting from the analysis of the smartness indicators developed in these last years, the aim of the paper is to verify how much these indexes are able to support the Europe 2020 strategy in reaching its own targets, becoming so an effective policy tool. ; Le débat sur le concept de ville intelligente s'est élargi ces dernières années. Pour identifier les facteurs de la ville intelligente, des spécialistes ont souligné le rôle de certains éléments tels que le développement économique, un contexte favorable aux entreprises, la durabilité environnementale, l'innovation sociale, le système d'information et de connaissance ainsi que le capital humain et social. Dans cette optique, le concept de ville inteligente est lié à la fois à l'efficacité de la gestion urbaine et au bien-être des citoyens, sous l'égide commune de l'utilisation de technologies appropriées. Les entreprises et les institutions ont également contribué à ce débat. Celles-ci ont associé, au concept d'intelligence, l'usage des TIC (technologies d'information et de la communication) comme un moyen d'améliorer la croissance économique. En particulier, la stratégie européenne 2020, axée sur une croissance durable, inclusive et intelligente, considère, d'une part, les villes comme des moteurs de développement et, d'autre part, la ville intelligente comme un modèle normatif de la ville contemporaine. Par conséquent, les indicateurs de performance de la ville intelligente deviennent de plus en plus importants. A partir de l'analyse des indicateurs développés ces dernières années, le but de ce travail est celui de vérifier dans quelle mesure ces indicateurs peuvent appuyer la stratégie Europe 2020 à fin d'atteindre ses objectifs et, ainsi, devenir un outil politique efficace.

The urbanization and the vulnerability of a city make challenging the ability of remaining along a sustainable development path. From a sustainability point of view, the smartness concept has been enlarged up to incorporate the definition of sustainable development with the so-called smart and sustainable cities. Another aspect is gaining importance in this debate: the growing challenges posed by climate change and by environmental issue at large. This issue has forced governments and in particular cities, which represent the main place for the prevention and the implementation of initiatives against negative environmental events, to develop flexible and resilient actions, initiatives and plans. In the near future, the majority of the population will be establishing in cities or urban context, so that the active actions will be based on the need to adopt solutions that address the principle of resilience. Since policies, plans and projects should succeed in considering together these three principles – sustainability, smartness and resilience – the aim of this paper consists in analyzing the common features of these concepts which may be at the basis of an integrated approach. Adapting the definition already accepted for buildings in terms of bright buildings, the relevance of brightness issue consists in developing a new paradigm of reference for a city.

The definition of a decision process, which implies the capacity to implement and realize an action involving all the actors interested, is crucial not only for taking adequate political decisions but even mainly for getting a democratic control of the decisions themselves. From a strategic planning point of view, decision process on public issues should be essentially considered as a process of participation, which involves political decision-makers as well as all the administrative organizations which have to realize the decisions taken and citizens and more generally all the stakeholders who will be impacted in a positive or negative way by such decisions. If this is the case, important issues arise: which is the methodology that should be followed to assess all the alternative solutions to adopt? How are analyzed the effects and the impacts of political decisions? How are evaluated the consequences of a set of actions? To answer to all these questions, Decision Support Systems (DSSs) have been developed. They include measurement tools such as cost-benefit analysis as well as relational methods of "rational analysis" such as multicriteria analysis. DSSs' allow decision makers to implement the best choices and decisions with the aim of reaching a Pareto improvement for the territory considered. Though these tools may be implemented to any socio-political decisions, in these last years the democratic and, therefore, political pressure has led to adopt DSSs' mainly for two specific themes: the environment and the sustainable mobility. Moreover, in the agenda of European institutions and local and national administrative governments, 1 sustainable mobility is become a high priority. In this framework, the methodology proposed combines two different approaches. On the one hand, the "classic" or top-down approach based on statistical data analysis is considered where the main target is the definition of some synthetic indicators, while on the other hand, the bottom-up approach is adopted, which is based on the Strategic Environment Assessment (SEA) framework and on citizens' participation. This decision process as defined, should be followed for implementing specific and appropriate solutions at local level and for taking into consideration the peculiarities of the territory considered. Finally, a case-study regarding the ex-13th District of the Municipality of Rome is presented.

AbstractThe relationship between government size and economic growth has been widely debated. Revisiting the subject from a distinct angle with respect to the mainstream approach, we provide an empirical analysis of the impact of government size on technical efficiency. The aim of this paper is to estimate the impact of public sector's size and of public expenditure components on 15 European countries' technical efficiency from 1996 to 2014 by using a True Random Effect model. Using the total public expenditure as a proxy for the government size we estimate simultaneously national optimal production function and technical efficiency by controlling for income distribution and institutional quality. Our main findings show that the effect of public sector's size on efficiency is positive while the type of public expenditures may have both positive and negative impact. In more details, results suggest that education and health expenditures have a positive effect on technical efficiency, while others have a negative impact.