Long lasting impact on the city
Decisions on investments in new transport, ICT and energy infrastructures, on real estate development and on the refurbishment of existing buildings, and on urban planning and city development, are taken today but will have an impact on the city for decades. What is more, most plans for smart, low carbon cities require approval of users and owners for specific measures, and for sharing of the financial burden. Lastly, most smart city projects have a lengthy preparation time, especially when they plan to make changes to physical infrastructures and buildings.
For these reasons, it is essential to have a vision shared and agreed with major stakeholders, investors and especially citizens and local businesses. The key question is: “how do we want to see the city we are living in, in 20, 30, or 50 years from now”? The SCGP roadmap ensures a coherent elaboration of this central vision during seven consecutive stages, each refining and concretising the outcomes of the previous stage. The methodology anchors the long-term perspective, emphasizes cross-domain collaboration, and takes into account the different roles and interests of stakeholders in the local ecosystem. In this way, coherency and a holistic perspective are ensured throughout the process.
Steps from planning to implementation
The path from planning to implementation can be summarized as follows:
- If an overall long-term city vision is not in place, this stage creates a vision that is shared with and supported by other internal and external stakeholders. Otherwise, an overall long- term city vision or specific plans such as SE(C)AP, might need to be attuned to smart city developments. It describes the long-term objectives for the smart city plan(s);
- From such a consensual vision, capturing long-term expectations for the city, a political commit-ment/decision of the city and the stakeholders is needed to start preparations, which work out the vision in a strategy and proposed actions. This commitment/decision also ensures a coherent alignment of priorities, through a holistic approach;
- By prioritising actions, operationalising them and defining them more narrowly, by setting precise targets and milestones, allocating responsibilities, and selecting a portfolio of projects, one or more plan(s) are drafted. This stage also establishes an urban platform for information and knowledge exchange, both internally and externally;
- Actual implementation of plans and projects takes place in the Do stage. With a culture of achieving results, this usually involves many amendments and changes, and a feedback loop with the subsequent stages Check and Act is established at this stage, in line with the Quality Management Systems approach. This enables an iterative cycle of improvement to achieve the set targets and agreed strategic objectives, in order to meet the vision collectively set up and agreed upon earlier. This stage uses the feedback from:
- Measurement of progress and evaluation against the targets as represented by the KPI’s during the Check stage. This continuous assessment of progress of the project, gives clues for improvement if needed;
- Improvement by making actual changes during project implementation to ensure that the targets are met in the Act stage;
- Throughout the process, particular attention to keeping the engagement of all stakeholders and citizens must be ensured, through communication and wide engagement;
- The stage of REPLICATE & SCALE UP organises the preconditions and support for repeating the project(s) at other locations, both within and outside the city’s territory and jurisdiction, and for bundling of demand in the market. Sharing of experiences and best practices is key to further market uptake and acceleration of smart city solutions, as success stories build trust and help to move from consultation to agreement.
This generic flow of stages, based on the well-known policy cycle, is common to all quality management led projects. However, in the case of cities and communities, the wide range of stakeholders with different interests makes it much more complex. Special skills in the field of cross-domain, multi-sectorial, systemic and holistic thinking are needed to consult and consider all interested parties, especially citizens, prior and during the implementation of any major strategic plan or project.
The scope of this roadmap ranges from sectorial, but with a highly holistic perspective, to highly integrated smart city plans. The different stages are based upon the Plan-Do-Check-Act concept, which is extended with a couple of stages which are deemed relevant for smart city and low energy district plans. The order and description of the content of each stage are based on common experiences of cities participating in the European Energy Award, lessons learned in the CONCERTO programme, and material from interviews with managers of FP9 and Horizon 2020 smart city projects. Finally, the stages take into account that the UN Sustainable Development Goals have been adopted by the EC and are therefore relevant to European smart city roadmaps as well (see figure 0-4).
With the term “cities”, city council and city administration are meant. The term key stakeholders refers to those stakeholders crucial for integrated planning and implementation of the smart city roadmap, such as citizens, and transport and energy operators.
From vision to results
The methodology proposed here in the SCGP, is partially based on the Quality Management Systems approach. This approach wants to guide local authorities in their efforts to stimulate and co-ordinate sustainable development. It is designed to take stock of existing activities and plan future initiatives in a holistic manner, to form and communicate a coherent, sustainable development strategy that supports the main objectives and final aim of each city’s vision. In this way, a holistic “helicopter” view is ensured as an alternative to managing sector by sector with unconnected sectorial plans.
Its main elements are:
●Political mandate for implementing sustainable development;
●Identifying and engaging stakeholders, developing consensus on priorities;
●Evaluating, benchmarking and measuring current and future conditions that impact progress
toward sustainable development;
●Developing and implementing a coherent action plan;
●Forecasting and back casting methods for bridging visions, targets and actions;
●Setting targets and KPI’s for sustainable development;
●Meeting city’s needs to carry out all these functions;
●Monitoring, reporting and verification. clarify responsibilities;
●Ensuring that there is consensus on who holds the coordinating role that has the needed competency and
can be a vision holder to safeguard that the project fulfils the decided KPI goals and that criteria are met.
Stages in reality less distinct
From the interviews and workshops conducted with key players such as smart city project managers and project partners, it appears that the different stages of implementation usually follow a more complex path than sketched above. The intensive, multi-sectorial collaboration that is required in integrated smart city projects between city and stakeholders with different backgrounds and roles, and the technical and organisational complexity of most projects, makes that often substantial amendments have to be made to the original plan during its implementation. In addition, many smart city projects are characterised by a high level of experimentation and some trial-and-error (living labs, testbeds, experimentation zones), what may result in a couple of rounds before satisfying outcomes are achieved. In reality, project progress often follows a more cyclical path, where project stages cannot be clearly distinguished, but are continuous processes occurring simultaneously (see Borsboom-van Beurden et
al., 2017). Nevertheless, for the sake of clarity, this document assumes a linear sequence of stages when describing the distinct steps from planning to implementation in more detail.