The Smart City and the Creation of Local Public Value

The distinctive feature of local authorities is the creation of public value in a financially sustainable way. In other words, they are expected to meet effectively the public needs of citizens, generating a positive spread between social benefits and costs and thus contributing to the prosperity of their community of reference (i.e. their constituency). At the same time, they are expected to pursue financial stability by efficiently using the increasingly scarce and therefore precious public resources. The fulfillment of this function is very complex, due to both the growing proliferation of public needs and the progressive lack of available resources, but also because it is significantly affected by the roles played by many other actors, including citizens, businesses, other public authorities and not-for-profit organizations. To address this difficulty, many local authorities state, in their strategic plans, that they wish to become smart. A smart city, in fact, identifies an urban environment actively engaged in improving the quality of life of its citizens and in pursuing sustainable socio-economic development, thanks to the wide and innovative use of information and communication technology. However, so far the concept of smart city, although widely used, does not have a consistent meaning and therefore needs to be deepened and better defined. More precisely, this paper seeks to identify fields of action in which the city can be smart, analyzing the potential benefits to quality of life, environmental protection and economic development, but also looking into the possible obstacles and potential solutions in the relationship between the local authority and other actors in the social system. Moreover, even the application of the smart city model is quite varied. In this regard, the paper aims to describe the state of the art of Italian regional capitals, seen as a significant sample of large and medium-size cities in the country, analyze their common and different features, strengths and weaknesses, and suggest some solutions to overcome weaknesses and exploit strengths. Therefore, the aim of this paper is two-fold. On a theoretical level, it aims to contribute to the smart city definition and critically analyze the relationship between this concept and the creation of local public value. On a practical level, it intends to verify the adoption of the smart city model by a significant sample of large and medium-size Italian cities, in order to draw useful indications of perspective. In essence, the paper aims to provide a critical and empirically informed analysis of the potential success, but also possible failure of the smart city projects.