Smart and Sustainable Cities: New Ways of Digitalization & Governance

Smart and Sustainable Cities: New Ways of Digitalization & Governance

Urban planners, policy makers and managers have an important role in making cities and communities more sustainable and resilient by incentivizing and developing smart solutions. Medellín in Colombia is a good example of how effective governance and cooperation with citizens led to the remake of the city and transformed it to a safer environment with a thriving economy. But how can those initiatives be sustained and governed? How can we deal with the challenges along the way, like effective stakeholders’ engagement, conflicting interests, decision-making under deep uncertainty, interdependent problems, spatial justice, and the transformation towards a digital society? To sum it up: building smart sustainable cities initiatives requires a strong governance capacity and new approaches!