How?

The first TO DO at the stage of vision development, is to make more specific which problem(s) or issue(s) the city actually wants to address with one or more smart city projects, how the problem or issue is understood and what is known about it so far. Usually these problems or issues are in the field of adaptation to or mitigation of climate change, energy efficiency and security, energy poverty, pollution, liveability, congestion, outdated infrastructures and provision of utilities, obsolete buildings and (re)development of areas, economic competitiveness, underperforming digital infrastructures, social cohesion, etc. These issues are closely related to the SDGs mentioned in the introduction, in particular to SDG 11, to which many cities have committed themselves.

Strong political leadership is crucial at this stage, not coming from one of the sectors, but usually from a Mayor or Vice-Mayor, although this might differ according to the administrative organisation of municipalities per country.

In case an overall city vision or urban strategy, SE(C)AP or SUMP is in place, it is probably not necessary to identify which problems the city wants to address from scratch. Long-term objectives related to prioritized problems, can be adopted from an existing overall plan or vision. Focus should be then on selecting the main challenges where programmes or projects need to be better aligned. The scale level of this step is usually the entire city, not the individual districts.

A long-term perspective on the city beyond the current political cycle, taking into account the full life-cycle of planned investments in the built environment, and agreed upon with stakeholders, safeguards that today’s decisions on smart cities and low energy districts, have an impact beyond current political cycles, and are the most suitable ones for achieving the cities’ long-term aims. Furthermore, the lengthy preparation time of most smart city and low energy district plans, asks for

political consistency. Political cycles and changed political priorities can hamper proper implementation of a cities’ long-term vision or lead to suboptimal choices when short-term effects are preferred over measures and approaches creating real impact in the long-term.

The next TO DO is about becoming aware and taking stock of what and who are needed in general to solve the problems identified before in terms of finance, internal collaboration, and stakeholders. Through explorative public hearings, informal consultation, and assignments to staff or consultants, information can be collected for a rough outline of the main financial and organisation aspects of the problem(s), and to find out who in the city is essential to have around the table in order to solve it. A preliminary list of people and organisations to contact, such as contractors, citizens and users or organisations representing them, agencies, research, and consultants, and their coordinates, must be drawn up. The scale level of this step is usually the whole city, not just a particular district.

It is also recommended to consider at a very early stage the financial needs of the different options and potential savings that might be achieved thanks to multi-sectorial consideration (i.e. scale effects and construction of temporary infrastructures).

In the same spirit, consulting and considering citizens’ voices and propositions will help in keeping motivation and relaying support to long-term projects, as well as prevent mistakes due to no detailed perception of the authorities and/or consulting stakeholders about specific issues and points of attention at the district level that could prevent or delay the implementation of projects or their objectives; 

Finally, having the complete picture of needs, barriers and opportunities, and especially an exhaustive cross-sector consideration with interface issues, will be very helpful to align decision making and investment decision, through trust.

As a consequence, in the next TO DO, the local ecosystem has to be organised, in case it is not yet sufficiently built up or developed, to ensure smooth collaboration on problems identified earlier. 

Various types of stakeholders

Nearly all successful smart city and low energy district projects are founded upon collaboration in the triple or quadruple helix of local administrations, research institutes, industry, and citizens, local businesses and other local actors. Due to the complexity of these projects, many different stakeholders must be engaged and diverging interests must be aligned. The overview in Figure 1-4 depicts the most common stakeholders in cross-domain smart city and low energy district projects. Three main groups can be distinguished: city administrations and their staff, strategic allies and additional initiators of plans, who are indispensable for preparing and realising the project, and parties enabling a successful planning and implementation in their capacity of advisor, financier or consultant. The identification of key stakeholders implies the following actions for TO DO 3: charting internal and external stakeholders, engagement and consultation of the most relevant ones (i.e. citizen focus groups), and identification of specific roles, of critical relations and interdependencies, and of legal responsibilities within the prospective stakeholder group. At this stage, the overview of stakeholders will not yet be exhaustive.

Collaboration between cities and research institutes

Potentially, research institutes can be very important partners for cities for this TO DO. They can be an important catalyst for new smart city projects, by using research funding for exploration of possibilities for establishing projects, testing out specific methods or technologies, or experimenting in living labs. Often the city considers its research institutes as a trustworthy partner, as the knowledge partners do not have to market specific solutions. Usually research has a very good overview of the methodological and technological state-of-the art in the field of smart cities. In addition, research partners can develop and test new technologies and methods, thus contributing to an innovative local ecosystem. They may also have expertise on social innovation around new technologies and can advise in that capacity. They can provide useful databases and quantitative models for monitoring and impact assessment of smart city solutions. Collaboration can happen in the form of smaller student or
PhD projects. Universities and Research and Technology Organisations (RTO’s)’s are key players in the valorisation of knowledge. Many cities and research institutes have managed to jointly shape an innovative environment for development and testing of new ideas, see for example Tampere, Barcelona and Amsterdam. To realise the full potential of research as a stakeholder and partner in preparation of smart city plans, sometimes new ways of collaboration need to be established and the right preconditions created. More formal structures as a Memorandum of Understanding, exchange of personnel, physical meeting spaces, and joint experiments and living labs, all help to establish such a learning environment.

WHY?  

As mentioned in the introduction, wide, early and in-depth stakeholder engagement is needed to achieve agreement on the final aim of the project and the proposed measures. TO DO 3 prepares the ground for a well-organised ecosystem in the future, enabling co-design, co-creation and co-production: essential features of integrated planning and implementation of smart city and low energy district project plans. 

Regarding the collaboration between cities and research institutes, one has to realise that cities and research have highly different incentives and work cultures.

In cities, a large part of the tasks focuses on management and maintenance of cities, often by contracting and procurement. Political cycles of four or five years determine the agenda and work programme between elections, which partially depend upon regional or national policies. The political
cycles are relatively short in comparison with the pace of dynamics in the built environment and its infrastructures. Within these short cycles, there is a need for quick results through policy and decision making, and thus for applicability of research and innovation outcomes. Information needs are often with respect to future developments in the city, and what that would mean for citizens and local businesses – the electorate. Democratic accountability for the spending of public sector resources and appreciation of project outcomes by voters play a very important role in assessing the success of projects.

Research, in particular universities, focuses often on exploring, understanding and explaining specific developments and relations between entities (causality). As a result, a major part of research analyses is looking at trends in the past, what might be at odds with the information that city administrations need to plan for the future. Timewise, research trajectories are sometimes not in sync with the political cycles of cities and regions. At universities, Phd and postdoc research usually take two to four years, with a substantial period spent on exploration of literature before any analysis or modelling is done. A key incentive for academics is the number of publications, especially in scientific journals with a high impact factor. Scientific language can be difficult to understand for policy and decision makers, and vice versa. Lastly, academic freedom might lead to frequent changes to research design and methodology.

Following, different aspects of the targeted problems or issues must be explored with the stakeholders identified so far, to hear their opinions and understand their interests. Usually this implies organising a brainstorm on different aspects of the problem(s)/issues(s) with the stakeholders, or comparable methods for discussion and dialogue. Apart from direct consultations, many other different formats for informing and engaging stakeholders have been developed over the years, which can be used here, all with their specific pros and cons. To name but a few: world café, round tables, focus groups, public hearings, canvassing, workshops, drawing of mindmaps, citizens panels, serious games, meetings at “pop-up” temporary physical meeting spaces, or neighbourhood festivals. 

In addition, internal collaboration within the city administration needs to be organised. Siloed municipal organisations are a problem that occurs often, discussed more in-depth in the next chapter.

WHY?

A well-organised local ecosystem promotes the successful preparation and realisation of plans for smart cities and low energy districts in four ways:

● Specific choices in behaviour and lifestyles of citizens can contribute to realising the objectives of smart city and low energy district plans, possibly supported by and nudged by advanced ICT;
● Citizens have a say as (end)-users of buildings, utilities, energy, transport and ICT networks. As tenants and owners of buildings, their rights are enshrined in laws and regulations, and
their approval is vital in processes as refurbishment. As end-users, they expect the same or better service levels. Citizens need to be informed and participate from the early phases of plan
preparation. Co-design of the content of plans with other stakeholders, and co-creation during the implementation stage, accommodate citizen’s rights and preferences, enlarge support for the plan, and contribute to its realisation.
● Due to different ownership structures and operational licenses in cities, in particular in countries where many public services have been privatised, urban stakeholders are highly dependent upon each other for successful preparation and implementation of a smart city plan, often relying on innovative procurement and novel business cases.
● Good ideas of citizens and local businesses, united in bottom-up initiatives, can be very powerful, but often need some form of facilitation by the local government. Lack of proper stakeholder engagement at an early stage can result in cancelled or delayed projects, or in difficulties during implementation, due to lack of buy-in of some stakeholders.

After the brainstorm with stakeholders for the previous TO DO, where different aspects and consequences of the problem(s) and issues (s) were discussed, the next TO DO entails that the city administration investigates directions for possible solutions with the same stakeholders, with the aim of determining their feasibility and viability. This step is necessary to prepare a collective agreement on the solutions and approaches in the future.

The last TO DO implies that conditions following from current legislative frameworks and ongoing obligations from binding commitments must be investigated, as these determine what can be done and what the city administration is allowed to do, or what the city administration has to do anyway. This defines the degrees of freedom in carving out new plans and activities under specific mandates or legal responsibilities. The resulting room for manoeuvre may lead to different choices in approach by the city administration and stakeholders when it comes to making the vision concrete.

This TO DO is also important because projects are planned within a specific legislative and political ontext that might change. These changes can result in new issues emerging, such as the need for new negotiations, reassessment of expectations, and adjustment of the intended project. Depending on the severity of the changes and their impact to the project, these can result in delays, postponement of implementation, or failure of the project. Therefore, any smart city or low energy district project plan should involve the city administration as the main stakeholder and co-creator in the planning process, responsible for safeguarding the vision at long term and for connecting to other related policy and decision-making processes. Both the process and the final project plan should be transparent and unambiguous about the scope and timeline, and any deviations from the original plan in future should be collaborative, approved by all stakeholders, and integrated into the project plan. Original and amended project plans must incorporate the political timeline into their possible risks, but these risks should be mitigated as much as possible by having a transparent, unambiguous, and consistent plan with approvals in place. In addition, the responsibility for smart city plans can be allocated to structures or organisations less vulnerable for political cycles. Finally, contracts and collaboration agreements can allow a time horizon longer than that of the political cycle.

WHY? 

The context within which the smart city and low energy district plans are prepared sets the stage for later project implementation.

 Frequently smart city projects are prepared and carried out separately, without a proper connection to ongoing national or EU obligations the city administration has committed itself to and which are related in content, e.g. implementation of SE(C)AP, SUMP or laws. As a consequence, synergies with these obligations are not exploited and possible savings in financial or human resources do not materialise. Connecting the dots at an early stage leads to better anchoring of smart city and low energy district projects. It can also help to clarify how these obligations and the mandates or authorities coming with them, influence the design of a new project in terms ofpreconditions, stakeholder engagement, and responsibilities.

 What is more, any relevant changes in the political or regulatory landscape can put the intended project at risk. Smart city projects with new or innovative solutions are generally considered more risky. Strong long-term political support is often a requirement for a successful project (Rivada et al., 2016).

The timelines of project planning and implementation may conflict, in duration, scale, or interval, with legislative cycles (Di Nucci, 2010). As many smart city projects may have elements that certain political factions may find controversial, the project may encounter an unexpected challenge, obstacle, or barrier due to changing laws or regulations, during one or more project phases. An example of such a legislative change mentioned in an interview, is that the introduction of GDPR legislation made telecom operators not willing to share GPS data on trips from mobile phones anymore, even not anonymised. As a result, the plan for creating better transport planning systems, had to be adjusted.  

Very similar to legislative changes, election cycles may run contrary to project cycles. This can result in, for example, a municipal champion of a project (the mayor) being replaced by a politician with goals that are inconsistent with the project (DI Nucci, 2010), or the need to bring a new politician up to speed and gain their support for an ongoing project (CELSIUS, 2014).