Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2021.
The concept of smart cities has seen its evolution over the years in three generations, in which the approach of the latest, coined Smart City 3.0, is characterized by predictive tools in both technological and human-centric relations. The Smart City 3.0 concept is geared toward facing the future challenges of society. The main aim of smart city initiatives is to better manage resources and to improve the quality of life of citizens. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, this becomes even more relevant as we see a multifaced environmental, social, economic, and political crisis arising globally. For the future Smart City 3.0, a transformation of cities is needed with regard to their development principles, urban management, and new mobility patterns of their citizens. These should be redefined, underpinned by smart technologies to face current challenges related to transport and land use, including network optimization, urban environmental requalification, and reducing externalities, such as air and noise pollution and traffic congestion. However, to create the future democratic cities, we have to empower citizens, and the co-creation of citizens for cities will benefit the future smart, sustainable city.
Herein, innovative solutions allow integrating data from multiple sources, including stakeholders and the built environment, using a wide range of smart devices. All this can be a challenging task. Particularly from the standpoint of transport planning and management, smart mobility encompasses a set of elements for modeling, analysis, and optimizing: real-time data from sensor networks for monitoring, estimating and forecasting, or infomobility services. To create solutions for a just society, integrated solutions are a necessity taking into consideration vulnerable and marginalized users. In this view, smart mobility aims to offer a seamless mobility experience, from the first to the last mile, which is flexible, integrated, secure, on demand, and convenient. However, transport planning is always interlinked with land use and people’s behavior in the built environment.
This Special Issue will consist of articles that analyze how to make smart cities work in this new era of Smart Cities 3.0, focusing on enabling technologies that can support resilient solutions fostering sustainable mobility and for smart, sustainable future cities.