Carlo Iacovini

by Boyd Cohen

Most of the time, smart cities initiatives begin at the municipal level, and occasionally they are prodded by citizen groups as bottom-up initiatives.  However the UK recently announced a competitive funding process for UK municipalities amounting to £24 million. And now it appears that Italy has chosen to explore a top-down strategy for rolling out smart cities throughout the country.

ABB recently completed research to assist the Italian government to to develop a national level strategy to encourage smart city advancement in the country.  After discovering that only 8% of residents had even heard of smart cities, they realized one of the first steps in the process will be to begin a citizen engagement program.

Thanks to the people at URENIO in Greece, I just discovered the English-language executive summary of the full report (which is in Italian) and will include some highlights here.

There are 7 key…