Opening Key Note
Carlo Alberto Nucci – University of Bologna
Smart Grids are considered one of the main enabling factors for the implementation of the Smart City paradigm. On the other hand, the concept of Smart City cannot be decoupled from that of climate (or carbon) neutrality. In fact, one of the five EU missions of Horizon Europe is dedicated to this concept, of which this keynote aims to briefly illustrate. The second part of the keynote will address the potential that energy communities have to realize the energy transition. First, the case of collective self-consumption will be dealt with, then the more general case of an energy community will be dealt with. Examples will be given for both cases, referring to the indications EU RED II and the recent Italian legislation on the subject.
Lecturers
Valentina Albanese – University of Pisa
The webinar focuses on the surveillance technologies implemented to monitor the contagion of the Covid-19 virus with broader reflections on urban government which, increasingly, uses digital surveillance as a tool for controlling and collecting personal data. In particular, the digital movement tracking system has raised several issues relating to the biopower it exercises, data justice and the advancement of surveillance capitalism.
Ignacio Alcalde – City Focus
In a rapidly and permanently changing world, society and cities are undergoing interesting transformations that are accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The smart city concept that technology companies were spearheading is now perceived as insufficient. Where are cities going after the pandemic? How can we redefine the concept of Urban Intelligence?
Giuseppe Borruso – University of Trieste
The concept of Smart City has been dominant in the scientific, political and technological debate along the past two decades, gathering thoughts and expectations on the impact of technology on a revolutionary evolution of the city. From a set of tools applied to the city, the Smart City today still holds uncertain characters and definitions. The webinar is a provocative tribute to the city, as one of the most important human footprint on the Earth, capable of reinventing renewing itself despite the attributes that from time to time are attached to it.
We will go through the brief history of the concept of Smart City, highlighting its main characters, aims, contradictions and solutions, trying to envisage possible solutions and evolution of the city in the years to come.
Muriel Cabianca – CRS4
Modern society produces enormous quantities of data that must be collected, used and processed in order to produce useful information in the urban context. The lesson will focus on the description of a platform dedicated to the management of data produced in the context of Smart Cities, and how it is necessary to have similar tools in order to effectively manage the amount of information that is produced. The entire data management chain will be analyzed, from its acquisition to its processing, passing through all the intermediate stages and analyzing the various technologies that animate the process.
Marco Cadinu – University of Cagliari
A newly founded medieval city such as Cagliari, born from 1215 onwards on a site of many thousand years of frequentation, should be studied and observed with regard to its urban structures and its territorial stratifications. Therefore, the aim of the lesson is to explain how the hill of the Castello district relates to the surrounding hydro-orographic structures, with the lagoon and coastal complex that has been the site of activity and landings over the centuries, and with elements of the previous cities.
Maurizio Carta – University of Palermo
In the cities lives a population that aspires to improve their lives through knowledge, being interconnected, a commitment to climate adaptation, the use of creative power and recycling to reduce land waste and respond to the need for health and happiness. Faced with these questions of our life, many cities have the keys to open the doors of the different present to enter the possible, sustainable, creative, fair and supportive future. I call them “Augmented Cities” of the Neoanthropocene, a new era in which humanity returns to take care of urban space and people, returns to generating beauty, returns to being an ally of nature.
Carlino Casari – CRS4
The webinar provides a set of elements aimed at framing the concept of planning in the urban context, with a more specific focus on the transport sector. The information flows in the construction of planning scenarios will be outlined and the technological components involved in the different phases will be introduced. A concrete use case on the topic of smart mobility will then be proposed.
Wendy Y. Chen – University of Hong Kong
Diverse benefits of urban forests have been extensively recognized, such as air pollutant removal, and storm-water management, and relevant empirical evidence is used to support urban forest planning and construction initiatives. However, far less emphasis has been placed on the public-health benefits, which is more meaningful for human beings during and post the pandemic. In this talk, I would like to explain the pathways linking urban forests with public health, and highlight several aspects that can help us think about how to realize the public health potential of urban trees and urban forests.
Gianmarco Chiri – University of Cagliari
The pandemic crisis has accelerated some processes of modification of human relationships and interactions and, consequently, of inhabited spaces. However, despite the drama of the event, it was not sufficiently ‘catastrophic’ to push towards a radical modification of the urban landscape as some theorists try to foreshadow. In other words, the public living space of cities demonstrates an extraordinary resilience that can (and must) be supported in favor of a healthier relationship with the technology of our present.
Gianluca Cighetti – SSG Group
The recent pandemic has seen the problems (sometimes transformed into opportunities) of viability, pollution and liveability of cities explode in all their complexity and contradiction, acquiring a significant role in the agendas of many Policy Makers as well as authoritative “Think Tanks”. At first, urban logistics was seen as a fundamental element to ensure “supplies” to a population in “confinement”. Subsequently, with the loosening of the restrictions, it becomes an indispensable element in living in the “new normal”. Within this framework, the webinar analyzes how much the pandemic has impacted in changing and accelerating the “consumption” of urban logistics and how the phenomenon should be understood to bring “sustainable” solutions for involved companies, for users and for the ‘environment.
Ester Cois – University of Cagliari
The ‘stabilisation of the emergency’, whose long tail is still showing at the end of 2021, has gradually given a character of ‘new habits’ to initially exceptional behaviour, induced by the epidemiological crisis, through the generalised learning of the rules of social distancing (prohibition of gatherings, limiting the capacity of public transport and buildings), of the use of sanitary equipment on a routine basis (obligation to wear a mask and to sanitise one’s hands) and of the subsequent need to obtain formal documentation attesting to one’s state of health in order to control access to places of collective use (green pass). This contribution aims to offer some elements for reflection on the plausible hypostatisation of some of the practices of re-signification of the right (and duty) to the city in the “new normality” evoked, but not yet settled, of post-pandemic urban life, starting from the micro-physics of social interactions that find their main palimpsest in the city.
Federico Cugurullo – Trinity College of Dublin
Technological innovation is constantly reshaping the materiality and mechanics of smart-city initiatives. Recently, innovation in artificial intelligence (AI) in the shape of self-driving cars, robots and city brains, has been pushing the so-called smart city to morph into an autonomous urban creature which is largely unknown. In this emerging strand of smart urbanism, artificially intelligent entities are taking the management of urban services as well as urban governance out of the hands of humans, operating the city in an autonomous manner. In this presentation, we will explore, in theory and practice, how the development of AI intersects with the development of the city.
Stefano De Falco – University of Neaples
For some decades now, the concept of Smart City has become more and more defined and circumscribed and the descriptive narrative on the general paradigms of digital transformation of cities has been more clearly delineated in quantitative and planning terms.
Although the Smart City today still partly has uncertain characters and definitions, smart city projects of emblematic application value are recognizable.
This webinar, based on the authors’ experiences in the field, therefore aims to illustrate a methodology based on sequential steps relating to both the project and operating phases of a Smart City considering the “citizens / users driven” perspective.
The reflection on the dichotomy of bottom up and top down approaches completes the discussion.
Gianfranco Fancello – University of Cagliari
The lesson will be addressed towards new concepts of accessibility paradigm regarding the urban mobility systems (traditional and innovative transport systems) during Covid 19 pandemic.
Giulia Fiorentino – University of Neaples
For some decades now, the concept of Smart City has become more and more defined and circumscribed and the descriptive narrative on the general paradigms of digital transformation of cities has been more clearly delineated in quantitative and planning terms.
Although the Smart City today still partly has uncertain characters and definitions, smart city projects of emblematic application value are recognizable.
This webinar, based on the authors’ experiences in the field, therefore aims to illustrate a methodology based on sequential steps relating to both the project and operating phases of a Smart City considering the “citizens / users driven” perspective.
The reflection on the dichotomy of bottom up and top down approaches completes the discussion.
Ferdinando Fornara – University of Cagliari
This seminar will focus on the support of the know-how developed in the Environmental Psychology domain for planning and designing urban spaces for the implementation of the Smart City. More specifically, the necessity of hearing the voices of those who occupy (and act in) a given urban place will be highlighted, within the theoretical perspective of the “user-centered design”. Hence, methods and tools that are useful for detecting users’ evaluations will be presented, stressing the importance of data reliability and of their translation into proper guidelines for urban planners and architects. This procedural path is consistent with the “evidence-based design” approach and should help to improve the quality of the interventions in the urban spaces, through the satisfaction of users’ needs and expectancies.
Julia Girardi-Hoog – University of Vienna
As Europe´s larges social housing provider, Vienna Housing has been challenged greatly by the Corona pandemic. Not only the pandemic is a major challenge, but also climate change, urbanization, demographic change etc. Some smart and innovative approaches to these challenges will be presented
Luciano Guglielmi – AICA
When talking about smart cities, two things come to mind: efficient services within everyone’s reach and improved quality of life. To achieve these two objectives, however, it is necessary to have an infrastructure (in terms of both the availability of resources and an adequate connection) that is enabling and therefore efficient, flexible and widespread. The Cloud and data transmission technologies have the task of facilitating the achievement of these objectives, breaking down barriers to the use of services and thus significantly reducing the social and economic “digital divide”.
Marijn Janssen – TU Delft
Data is the raw material for creating value in smart city applications. These applications rely on data which is not only big, open and linked but varied, dynamic and streamed at high speeds in real-time. Data governance is needed for ensuring the availability and quality of data for use by smart city applications. In this lecture data governance concepts will be discussed. Specifically, the linking of data, data infrastructures, and the governance of open data will be tackled.
Dina Kamal Shehayeb – University of Nile
The webinar attempts to bring to the forefront the human dimension in this fast-growing technology-based ecosystem of data and decision-making. Based on connectivity, the limits seem endless. Yet, certain questions persist. How is the human dimension conceptualized in this scheme? Whose values and lifestyle are reference? Where lies the locus of control? Are Smart Cities a tool or a measure?
Andrea Lanuzza – CAP Group
When we talk about sustainability, we cannot consider only the environment, without taking into account its relations with society and the economy. Similarly, talking about digital sustainability does not mean limiting oneself to talking about technology alone. Rather, it means reflecting on how it redefines the processes and paths of change by making technology an active tool of sustainability, useful – indeed, indispensable – to pursue the objectives of Agenda 2030. The transformation, which, as a CAP Group, led to the challenge of the circular economy, it is not just about technology and digital. Transformation is understood as a cultural change that involves the entire organization and the players in the supply chain. The enhancement of our purifiers is at the center of this challenge which, however, could not be faced without creating synergies in the area.
Massimiliano Mandarini – Polytechnic of Milan
The webinar investigates the new models of Urban and Rural Places in which nature, technology and human activities generate creative and sustainable communities, on a human and planetary scale, as a new paradigm of urban regeneration, where to live and work in a hybrid way and circulate for Eco-intelligent Communities with the human being at the center of new ecosystems tailored to the Planet.
Ezio Micelli – IUAV University of Venice
The contribution considers the path of innovation that the construction sector must take in the light of the new objectives of sustainability and circularity of economies. The efficiency of the sector and its production processes is considered in the light of the need for growth contamination with manufacturing through the contribution of the digitalisation of processes.
Monica Morazzoni – IULM of Milan
The webinar analyzes and evaluates how major sporting events can convey urban regeneration actions through smart solutions, restyling, smart building and social participation operations through cultural and educational programming complementary to sports. In view of the 2026 Winter Olympics, the city of Milan is taken as a case study in the context of mega-sporting events.
Mario Mureddu – University of Cagliari
“The wide availability of renewable energy sources and the recent technological advancements in IoT, Artificial Intelligence and blockchain will change the way energy will be produced and distributed. The current electricity distribution approach, which involves private companies acting as intermediaries between large production centers and end users will be overcome by the creation of local energy markets and communities, through which users will be able to freely exchange energy with their neighbors, avoiding brokerage costs and consuming zero km clean energy. This will ideally allow to reach a situation in which there will be widespread use of locally produced energy, which can ideally be shared among local communities according to the precepts of the sharing economy. This seminar will illustrate the current state of research in the field of blockchain enabled energy sharing economy, and will briefly give an example of a technology developed at the University of Cagliari.”
Sara Paiva – Polytechnic of Viana do Castelo
This lecture will focus on smart mobility in smart cities, mainly from a research perspetive. Topics will address smart mobility’s main issues, principles and services. Also, the main trends and the need to reduce CO2 emissions in the coming years will be discussed. Finally, some case studies of ongoing research projects will be presented.
Maria Paradiso – University of Neaples
Pandemic and post pandemic urban studies mostly refer to static issues i.e. the urban fabric renewal and issues of physical distance to avoid infection. Strolling through the streets of our cities, you may notice that the new, high-tech and silent means of transport are joining the typical means of traditional urban mobility, dominated by cars and private vehicles. Innovation is not only technological but also conceptual since electric scooters and e-bikes have become part of the shared mobility model and urban fabric. The sharing mobility system is ambitious, since it is proposed as a tool to mitigate the private use of the car in favour of a common and greater cause, aimed at rethinking the relationship between ourselves and the places we travel daily: our city. Thus, I will discuss here issues of urban territorial and personal innovation around the case of individual smart mobility. I would like to engage students in a reflexive understanding about this topic on the basis of the case of Milan. Before my lecture, students are kindly invited to collect photos and data on their cities on the topic of e-scooters (monopattini) and write one page on the topic. I will show their data in case they provide interesting additional information enriching common discussion.
Stefano Pili – Sotacarbo
The economic and social crisis generated by the pandemic has generated various effects including the increase in expenses and the number of households in conditions of energy poverty. One of the main actions to counter this phenomenon is to improve the efficiency of the real estate units which, thanks to the opportunities offered by the Recovery Plan, can be carried out even with minimal investments. The AUREE project (Urban Energy Abacus of Buildings), presented as a case study, aims to develop and test a support tool for energy efficiency and recovery processes of the existing buildings based on a portal (Web – GIS, GeoBlog ).
Eleonora Riva Sanseverino – University of Palermo
The webinar proposes a comprehensive overview of the Horizon Europe program. Some elements underlying the concept of resilience in the urban context will then be introduced and what are the challenges of urban transformation. An innovative solution for peer-to-peer transactions based on blockchain and applied to the energy context will then be briefly illustrated.
Graziella Roccella – Planet Smart City
A smart district, in the post pandemic age is a neighbourhood where the residents (both Insiders and Outsiders) can find and use innovative solutions to foster community development. Intelligent Irrigation Systems, Metering Systems, Flood and Fire Detectors are some examples of solutions able to reduce energy and water consumptions and contribute to the responsiveness in case of shocks and stresses. At the Community Level, shared spaces such as a Social Kitchen, Fitness area and Co-working stations within the residential complex can help the citizen to live in a better and more sustainable way.
Jacopo Torriti – University of Reading
When we all consume electricity at the same time, energy suppliers have to activate dirty old power plants with excessive greenhouse gas emissions and high system costs. Shifting the timing of electricity demand is critical for balancing the grid when consumption is high and when there are drops in supply from renewables. However, little is known about the extent to which pricing and new technologies will enable a higher level of demand-side flexibility. In this inaugural lecture, Jacopo Torriti presented research on the timing of electricity demand, peaks, people’s activities and demand-side flexibility.
Marco Zacchigna – IBM
Starting from real experiences on the topic of assisted and / or smart mobility (CLASS research project, collaborations between companies in the Milan Smart City Alliance and in the Joint Research Lab with the Politecnico di Milano), the webinar explores both the results and the methodological aspects and governance, broadening the perspective on the smart city and smart districts.
Giovanna Zavettieri – University of Rome “Tor Vergata”
The webinar analyzes and evaluates how major sporting events can convey urban regeneration actions through smart solutions, restyling, smart building and social participation operations through cultural and educational programming complementary to sports. In view of the 2026 Winter Olympics, the city of Milan is taken as a case study in the context of mega-sporting events.
Scientific Director of the School
Luigi Mundula
luigimundula@unica.it
Organizational Coordination
Mara Ladu
Alessandro Sebastiano Carrus
tomorrows.cities.school@gmail.com
