Creative City 3.0: smart cities for the urban age

In current financial, economical and political crisis, with the progressive downgrading of theStates and the world’s GDPs dropping, the strong flows of financial, social and relational capitalthat powered urban regeneration over the last fifteen years are no longer available to be tappedin on in an indiscriminate manner as it seems was the case until just a few years ago. The mostdynamic cities in the near future will no longer be those that are able to attract urban projectsdriven by the real estate market, or hedge funds, but the cities that have extensive cultural andidentifying resources and that are able to use them as the basis for creating new culture and newurban value.Today, within the “smart cities” scenario, the paradigm of the creative city calls for a furtherevolutive leap forward – the third – because it is capable of producing multiplication andregeneration effects on urban development. The Creative City 3.0 is therefore no longer simplya category used for interpretation among economists and sociologists or an urban planningchallenge, but rather calls on decision-makers to take action and demands a vigorouscommitment on the part of town planners and architects, as the development of nations andwellbeing of the community will only be measured according to the cities that tackle thefinancial global change in a creative manner. The urban century in which we live is not filled byonly “hyper cities”, but also shows the emergence of medium metropolises and networks ofmicropolises. Especially in Italy, the network of the “innovative cities” is supporting by middlecities, the “small capitals” that produce alternative visions – founded in quality and powered byculture – to that of the explosion of megalopolises.One commitment that cannot be put off by governors and managers, planners and designers,promoters and communicators, entrepreneurs and investors, will be that of creating dynamic,vibrant cities that generate new urban values and multipliers of invested capital. These citiesmust be places people want to live, work, and train in and get to know, productive places thatattract investments.In European vision, the evolution of creative cities towards a network of “smart cities” able toredefine the urban age identity, is founded on three competitive factors: Culture,Communication, and Cooperation. Inside this evolutive background, with an highly dynamic ofchange, it has become necessary to understand and evaluate how cities and territories arechanging, convinced that it is not only necessary to recognize the role of the “creative agents” inthe development of the cities, but also the commitment to this urban creativity being one of theprimary factors in the evolution of communities and economic development. The city must onceagain become a powerful “generator of value” starting with its own spatial, social, cultural andrelational resources, able to transform the global network in local resources.