Abstract
This paper proposes a re-thought of the concept of urban smartness, particularly referring to the energy component. Recognizing that the new technologies, which are the most popular aspect of smartness, can play a fundamental role in the new approach, it has been suggested that we consider them in an adoptive way rather than in an adjunctive way, as it is commonly intended in the general sense of a smart city. According to this vision, in the first part of the paper, a new concept of smartness is proposed (SmartNESS: Smart New Energy Saving System). This concept is also related to the possibility of identifying some leading urban functions that can play a strategic role in improving urban smartness. In this sense, in the second part, tourism is considered as a drive function able to make cities more efficient and attractive if it will be integrated inside the urban governance process. The third part of the paper highlights how the rationalization and reduction of energy consumption is one of the essential fields to rely on in order to improve the smartness of a city. This part provides an overview of the most significant initiatives that are being developed on energy efficiency, and investigates some cases particularly innovative addressing the issue with an integrated and non-sectorial approach. Through the analyzed experiences, some possible intervention strategies to integrate the issues of energy efficiency in urban planning are suggested in the conclusive part of the paper.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The World Tourism Organization highlights that tourism has become one of the largest and fastest-growing economic sectors in the world. About 9 % of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) comes from tourist activities (direct, indirect and induced) while its contribution to employment is estimated in the order of 7 % of the overall number of jobs worldwide (direct and indirect) and about 1.4 billion of US dollars come from tourism export market (UNWTO 2015).
- 2.
In spite of global crisis, tourism has an uninterrupted growth over the past six decades. International tourist arrivals have increased from 25 million globally in 1950, to 278 million in 1980, 527 million in 1995, and 1133 million in 2014 (UNWTO 2015). At present, tourism involves all different social levels, being a cross activity, affecting several sectors (mobility, hospitality, leisure, etc.).
- 3.
Literature is copious about definitions of tourism carrying capacity (Maggi and Fredella 2010). Scholars agree about the complexity of the concept and refers to different components based on three main relationships:
-
environmental: refers to the capacity of natural resources that are in de tourist destination and their fruition by tourists.
-
cultural: refers to the tourists’ satisfaction based on their expectation;
-
socio-economic: concerns to the social and economic satisfaction of the residents referred to the presence of tourists in their city.
These relationship can be find into the definition by the UNWTO (1981) “the maximum number of people that may visit a tourist destination at the same time, without causing destruction of the physical, economic and socio-cultural environment and an unacceptable decrease in the quality of visitors’ satisfaction”.
-
- 4.
In this study, entropy has been considered as a widespread negative condition of the urban system, which hinders the positive processes to achieve sustainability and tends to move the system towards trajectories totally different from those expected (see also Fistola and La Rocca 2013).
- 5.
Transversality refers to the multiplicity of sectors (public and private) involved in tourist development. Pervasivity refers both to the constant growth of tourism in the late sixty years and to the trend that characterizes actual demand, at all social levels, impatient of sharing its own experiences rapidly and in real time.
- 6.
- 7.
Criteria for destination pointed out by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council propose and establish standards for sustainability in tourist destination recognizing tourism as a potent tool both for preserving resources and reduce poverty (see http://www.gstcouncil.org).
- 8.
The 2010 Energy Performance of Buildings Directive and the 2012 Energy Efficiency Directive.
- 9.
During the first Meeting of the UNWTO Tourism Resilience Committee, in 2009, Smart tourism has been defined as “clean, green, ethical and quality at all levels of the service chain. A type of tourism able to satisfy the needs for the short-term responses to the economic crisis as well as those one of long term as sustainable development, poverty alleviation and mitigation climate change”.
- 10.
Referring to this issue in the premises of the document it is stated: the tourism sector must rapidly respond to climate change, within the evolving UN framework and progressively reduce its Greenhouse Gas (GHG) contribution if it is to grow in a sustainable manner. This will require action to: mitigate its GHG emissions, derived especially from transport and accommodation activities; adapt tourism businesses and destinations to changing climate conditions; apply existing and new technology to improve energy efficiency; secure financial resources to help poor regions and countries.
- 11.
Buhalis and Amaranggana (2014, p. 557): Smart Tourism Destinations can be perceived as places utilizing the available technological tools and techniques to enable demand and supply to co-create value, pleasure, and experiences for the tourist and wealth, profit, and benefits for the organizations and the destination.
- 12.
In the UK a household is retained to be in ‘fuel poverty’ if it spends more than 10 % of its income on heating and power.
- 13.
The island passes from a population of about 65,000 inhabitants in winter to about 300,000 inhabitants in summer (Municipality of Gotland).
- 14.
Economic Development Min. Dec. 17 July 2014 Approval of the “Italian Action Plan for Energy Efficiency 2014” (Official Gazette 31 July 2014 no. 176).
- 15.
The reference is to the “Smart Energy Master for energy management of territory” project that has been co-financed by the National Operational Programme for Research and Competitiveness 2007—2013 Smart Cities and Communities. The Environment Mobility Workshop of the Department of Civil, Building and Environmental Engineering of Federico II University of Naples drew up the project. For more details: http://smartenergymaster.unina.it/.
- 16.
The importance of having open data available for finalizing specific strategies is also stressed in the introduction to the Energy Atlas “It would have been impossible to produce the Energy Atlas without the data provided by third parties. The sharing of data and gaining insight into each other’s interests and considerations is of huge importance to making energy transition a reality.” (City of Amsterdam 2014).
References
Battarra R (2014) Energy Component and Smart City Planning: Best Practices in Italy. In: Papa R (ed) Towards Smart City a Scientific Approach, Aracne, Rome. ISBN 978-88-548-7024-6
Berry BJL (1964) City as systems within systems of cities. In: Papers and proceedings of the regional science association, vol 13. pp 157–176
Buhalis D, Amaranggana A (2014) Smart tourism destinations. In: Xiang Z, Tussyadiah I (eds) Information and communication technologies in tourism 2014. Springer International Publishing, Switzerland. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-03973-2_40
Carta M (2014) Smart Planning and Intelligent Cities: a New Cambrian Explosion. In: Riva Sanseverino E, Riva Sanseverino R, Vaccaro V, Zizzo G (eds) Smart Rules for Smart Cities. Managing Efficient Cities in Euro-Mediterranean Countries. Springer, ISBN:978-3-319-06421-5
City of Amsterdam (2014) Energy Atlas Amsterdam Southeast. Available at http://www.amsterdam.nl/wonen-leefomgeving/energie/energieatlas/. Last visit May 2015
Commoner B (1971) The closing circle: nature, man and technology, Knopf Inc. (Random House), Munich
Deakin M, Campbell F, Reid A, Orsinger J (2014) The mass-retrofitting of an energy efficient-low carbon zone in the UK 2015. Springer Briefs in Energy. ISBN 9781447166207
Economic Development Ministry (2013) Strategia Energetica Nazionale: per un’energia più competitiva e sostenibile, marzo. Available at: http://www.sviluppoeconomico.gov.it/images/stories/normativa/20130314_Strategia_Energetica_Nazionale.pdf. Last visit May 2015
ENEA (2014) Piano d’azione italiano per l’efficienza energetica. Available at: http://www.mise.gov.it/images/stories/pubblicazioni/PAEE_2014.pdf. Last visit May 2015
Ercole E (2013) Smart tourism: il ruolo dell’informazione social. Annali del turismo vol 2
European Court of Auditors (2012) Cost-effectiveness of cohesion policy investment in energy efficiency, Special Report n. 21. Available at: http://www.eca.europa.eu/Lists/ECADocuments/SR12_21/SR12_21_EN.PDF. Last visit May 2015
European Parliament, Directorate-General for Internal Policies (2014) Mapping smart cities in the EU, IP/A/ITRE/ST/2013–02 January. Available at: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/etudes/join/2014/507480/IPOL-ITRE_ET(2014)507480_EN.pdf. Last visit May 2015
Expo Milano 2015 (2014) Rapporto di sostenibilità Expo Milano 2015. Available at: http://www.expo2015.org/it/news/tutte-le-news-/pubblicata-la-seconda-edizione-del-rapporto-di-sostenibilita-di-expo-milano-2015. Last visit May 2015
Fistola R (2012) Urban entropy vs sustainability: a new town planning perspective. In: Pacetti M, Passerini G, Brebbia CA, Latini G (eds) The sustainable city VII, vol 155. WIT press, WIT Transactions on Ecology and The Environment, pp 185–204
Fistola R, La Rocca RA (2013) Smart City Planning: a systemic approach. In: Yiğitcanlar T, Bulu M (eds) Establishing bridges: the 6th knowledge cities world summit, KCWS 2013, Lookus Scientific, ISBN 978-9944-380-11-9
Giffinger R, Fertner C, Kramar H, Kalasek R, Pichler-Milanović N, Meijers E (2007) Smart cities: ranking of European medium-sized cities, final report, centre of regional science (SRF), Vienna University of Technology. Available at: http://www.smart-cities.eu/download/smart_cities_final_report.pdf
Grasselli P (1989) Economia e politica del turismo. FrancoAngeli, Milano
Huang X, Yuan J, Shi M (2012) Condition and key issues analysis on the smartertourism construction in China. In: Multimedia and signal processing. Springer, Berlin
ISPRA (2013) Stato dell’ambiente, http://annuario.isprambiente.it
ISPRA (2015) Indagine sulle strutture ricettive a marchio Ecolabel, UE, ISPRA-Servizio Certificazioni Ambientali
Jost J (2004) External and internal complexity of complex adaptive systems. Theory Biosci 123:69–88
Kim DY, Park J, Morrison AM (2008) A Model of Traveller Acceptance of Mobile Technology. Int J Tourism Res. doi:10.1002/jtr.669
La Rocca RA (2014) The role of tourism in planning the Smart City. TeMA J Land Use, Mobility Environ 7(3):268–282. University of Naples Federico II. doi: 10.6092/1970-9870/2814 e-ISSN 1970-9870, print ISSN 1970-9889
Lynch K (1960) The image of the city. MIT press, Harvard
Maggi E, Fredella LF (2010) The carrying capacity of a tourist destination. In: Conference paper. Available on research gate https://www.researchgate.net
Mathesion A, Wall G (1982) Tourism: economic, physical and social impacts. Longman
Mobus GE, Kalton MC (2015) Principles of systems science. Understanding complex systems. Springer, New York
Papa R, Gargiulo C, Galderisi A (2013) Towards an urban planners’ perspective on Smart City. TeMA J Land Use Mobility Plann 6(1)
Papa R, Galderisi A, Vigo Majello MC, Saretta E (2015) Smart and resilient cities. A systemic approach for developing cross-sectoral strategies in the face of climate change. TeMA J Land Use, Mobility Environ 8(1)
Rong A (2012) China economic net. Retrieved July 22, 2013, available at http://en.ce.cn/Insight/201204/12/t20120412_23235803.shtml
The European House—Ambrosetti (2012) Smart Cities in Italy: an opportunity in the spirit of the Reinassance for a new quality of life. Available at: http://www.ambrosetti.eu/it/download/ricerche-e-presentazioni/2012/smart-cities-in-italia. Last visit 15 May 2015
Thurot JM (1980) Capacité de charge et production touristique, Chet, Université d’Aix-Marseille
UNEP and UNWTO (2012) Tourism in the green economy—background report. Printed by the World Tourism Organization, Madrid, Spain
UNWTO (1981) Saturation of tourist destinations. Report of the Secretary General, Madrid
UNWTO (2015) Tourism highlights. Available at http://mkt.unwto.org
von Bertalanffy L (1968) General system theory. George Braziller, New York
Wang D, Li XR, Li Y (2013) China’s “smart tourism destination” initiative: a taste of the service-dominant logic. J Destination Marketing Manage 2(2):59–61
Wallot C, Gurr JM (2014) Introducion: towards a transdisciplinary understanding of complex urban systems. In: Wallot C, Gurr JM, Schmidt JA (eds) Understanding complex urban systems: multidisciplinary approaches to modeling. Springer, New York
Acknowledgments
The authors have made a joint contribution to the paper’s conception and design, background and concluding remarks. Romano Fistola designed the methodological approach to the problem and the definition of urban smartNESS (§§ 1, 2 and 3). Rosa Anna La Rocca analyzed the role of tourism as a driver urban function to shift the city towards smartNESS conditions (§§ 4, 5 and 6). Rosaria Battarra, by the analysis of the most significant and innovative initiatives on energy efficiency, outlined possible guidelines to implement the smart city (§§ 7, 8 and 9).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Battarra, R., Fistola, R., La Rocca, R.A. (2016). City SmartNESS: the Energy Dimension of the Urban System. In: Papa, R., Fistola, R. (eds) Smart Energy in the Smart City. Green Energy and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31157-9_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31157-9_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-31155-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-31157-9
eBook Packages: EnergyEnergy (R0)