Many cities around the world are at the stage of conceiving and planning “smart city” projects to support sustainable urban development. There is an increasing concern of variety of technical visions, models and narrow approaches, and on many occasions, “the push towards smart cities as being led by the wrong people – technology companies with naïve visions and short term commercial goals; while the architects, planners and scientists… often struggle to share their specific knowledge” (Townsend, “Smart Cities”). As a result, most of them are planned as conceptually defective cities, with fragmented “smart city” projects, one step at a time, usually resulting in unsustainably over-costly ventures. The necessity of addressing cities in a holistic, systematic and integrated way is systematically advanced by EIS Ltd: To explore a “holistic smart city policy thinking”, we conceived an intelligent eco city property development from scratch in 2009, selected in 2012 as a showcase for the European smart city and communities: http://neapolis.com On a national scale, we have proposed to test the fully sustainable city redevelopment model to the federal government of Russia: (SMART RUSSIA) As well as to the largest capital-city of Moscow to act as a strategic leverage point for strengthening the national economy and global competitiveness. It happens the intelligent city grand designs are possible to apply for transforming existing legacy cities, but with some additions and reservations; for retrofitting existing cities is looking more challenging, complex, expensive and disruptive. First, there are multiple parties, stakeholders, processes and actions involved, requiring coordination and oversight. Second, there are old national, regional and urban planning systems, budget constraints, and government funds already assigned or committed to the “business-as-usual” purposes. Third, regardless of benefits, competitive advantage and investment capacity, the city councils are still very conservative of urban innovations and smart solutions. Again, supported by the fast-track procurement procedures, sustainable city regulations and planning systems, and integrated urban development financial schemes, the “true city” development practice could be widely spread across Russia, its major conurbations and small cities, thus minimizing unsustainable urban areas and communities: As our experience shows, we hardly could build a better world of smart and sustainable cities unless government officials, mayors and governors, academia and research institutions, businesses and citizens develop strong commitments to: 1. A vision of the world where a holistic policy thinking, intelligent design, digital technology, eco-engineering solutions and social innovations are synergized. 2. A comprehensive “smart city” development strategy as a key tool to sustained economic growth and prosperity. 3. Addressing cities in a holistic, systematic and integrated way where urban planning is spanning across energy, transport and information and communication technologies, as well as water and waste; economy and business; education and health; safety and security; food and consumption; government and public services; environment and nature. 4. “City smartness” (city is a coordinator, performing an integrated city approach, a policy maker, adopting smart city regulations, and a public actor, “leading by example”, refurbishing public buildings, deploying ICT networks, etc.). 5. Urban intelligence (city is governed by an intelligent urban platform for control and management, integration and optimisation of urban systems and flows (traffic, energy, water, waste, emissions, people, goods, services, data and information). As much as research, knowledge and innovation is a necessity for smart growth, a comprehensive city strategy, comprising a global vision, set of principles and goals and implementation plan, is an essential must for the integrated urban planning and re/development of sustainable cities and smart communities.
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