From Sustainible City to Smart City

About twenty-five years after its statement the concept of sustainability is still controversial. The big success that the word “sustainability” has been acquiring in the last thirty years, as well as the difficulties in applying its principles to almost totally artificial contexts such as the urban ones, should make us wonder about how to use it more carefully. The perspective of sustainability, indeed, seems to call for change or, at least, to re-visit the present models of socio-economic growth, which cannot at all be defined “sustainable”. At present, human beings use up the equivalent of 1,3 terrestrial planet each year, although it has been acquired the awareness that the system we live in is a “finite system”. As finite system, it has several limitations (land, absorption of waste and pollutants, huge vital cycles, indiscriminate increase in population and production) that inevitably produce restrictions (Tiezzi and Marchettini 2001). The essence of sustainability should consist, on the contrary, in restoring a relationship between the available resources and the welfare level that one intends to get. This fact would entail, at least, a consumption containment in favour of forms and models based on green economy, namely on a type of economy that apart from profit would consider also the effects on the environment tout court and the benefits deriving from a better use of the resources. Making people aware of environmental and social impacts of unsustainable choices is the basic condition for any sustainable policy. Starting from these considerations, this article examines three examples of socio-urban organization that could be particularly significant for the emergent “smart city” model.