Managing Sustainability in Smart Cities

Nowadays, the debate about the smartization of urban contexts is even more complex because of the consideration on sustainability as the aim to guarantee durability and efficiency to smart city projects. In order to investigate how to pursue such an aim, and which are the already achieved results, the present research observes the connections between sustainability and each pivotal feature on which smartization processes are based on through a Content Analysis through Nvivo on Official Reports issued by the 15 Industry Players listed on the Navigant Research Report, as they are involved in the most advanced smart city projects. Sustainability emerged as strictly linked to governance, as the governing body conveys this approach when deploying smart interventions. Finally, in order to explore which of the three dimensions of sustainability - economic, environmental, social - is today more considered in smart city projects, we put in evidence the usage of these conceptualisation in the analyzed documents. The results led us to consider the economic domainas the most relevant one when debating about sustainability.