Smart Cities MOOC

Block 1 Reading

Author: IGLUS, EPFL

iglus@epfl.ch, www.iglus.org

1 Introduction

Welcome to the first reading block of the Smart Cities MOOC. These readings will help you to
quickly access information, to consolidate your learning and to apply it to a real-life case study.
First, we introduce key definitions of the concepts covered in this block. Second, we present you
with explanations on: what is a city, what is digitalization, what is a smart city, and what are their
implications. Finally, we conclude with a case study of the Smart City Barcelona and their efforts
in using digitalization to increase efficiency and well-being in their city.

2 Block 1 Summary

2.1 Definitions

To facilitate and streamline the understanding of these weeks’ lectures, below you will find the
definitions of the main concepts introduced during the block:

Sociotechnical Systems: are systems in which people and technology (including infrastruc-
tures) interact in a reciprocal relationship within an environment. It was first coined in the 1950s to
describe the complexities of the modern workplace framework but has evolved to include a wide
range of other environments, such as cities. It further implies an optimization of this relationship
through a joint design, which considers both technical and human factors [1].

Infrastructure: are the physical components of systems, such as structures or facilities, which
serve the purpose of enabling economic productivity of businesses, industries, cities and other
entities. It includes: transportation infrastructure (tunnels, roads, bridges, etc.), energy infrastruc-
ture (grid, generators, etc.), and communication infrastructures (satellites, landlines, etc.), among
others [2].

Feedback Loops: are processes of using the outputs of a component of a system to influence
input for the same component. These loops can be of two kinds: the first is a positive or reinforcing

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loop. Reinforcing loops promote changes in the same direction, thus amplifying its effects. An
example of this is found in climate science: the warmer the planet gets, the more glaciers melt.
Since glaciers help keep temperature low by reflecting sunlight, the more they melt, the more the
planet gets warm. The second kind of loop is a negative or balancing loop: these loops promote
changes in the other direction, thus helping stabilize the system. A good example of this is found
in old mercury thermostats: mercury expands and contracts according to temperature changes.
As such, when temperature reached desired levels, the mercury would expand and trigger the
shut down of the heating systems. When it got too cold, the contracted mercury would then trigger
the system into starting up again [3].

Path Dependency: is the concept that the set of choices an individual or entity has when
deciding on a course of action depend and are and limited by the decisions they have made in the
past, even if the circumstances of these past decisions are no longer valid. This pathway is used
by economists and sociologists to help explain the adoption and uptake of different technologies
which are put forth in the market, and why some choices dominate over others [4].

Legacy Systems: are methods, technologies and infrastructures that are considered outdated.
An example would be the old telecommunications network, including landlines, which is slowly
being replaced by mobile telecommunications.

Networks: are systems of interconnected things. An example is the electricity network, which
connects households, factories, and other facilities to electricity generation plants using a trans-
mission grid.

Internet of Things (IoT): defined as the interconnection of connecting devices using the Internet.
These devices can be mobile phones and computer, as well as everyday objects and household
items that are enabled to communicate relevant data through the Internet. An example is connect-
ing an air conditioning unit to the Internet of Things; this unit can receive data regarding outside
temperature, room occupancy, and electricity prices to determine when are the optimal moments
to turn on and off, and at what potency.

Value Chain: defined as the process of adding value to an item. It includes production, op-
erations, logistics, marketing, sales, and servicing as primary activities, as well as other support
activities provided by the firm, such as human resources and procurement [5].

Management: defined as the process of administering people or activities. It includes activities

such as forecasting, planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating, and controlling [6].

Governance: defined as ”the means by which order is accomplished in a relation which poten-
tial conflict threatens to undo or upset opportunities to realize mutual gains” [7].

Technology Push: defined as the theory that “advances in scientific understanding” and “avail-
ability of technological opportunities determine the rate and direction of innovation” [8]. An ex-
ample of this is the development of personal music playing devices, starting with the Walkman.
These technologies were not developed based on any identified need but rather because of the
constantly evolving technological opportunities.

Demand Pull: defined as the theory that “demand drives the rate and direction of innovation”.
According to this idea, changes in the market and in the public demand guide companies into
working on particular technologies and solutions, which are then sold to the public [8]. An ex-
ample of this is the development of airbags for cars to answer the need of protecting drivers and
passengers.

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2.2 What is a City?

In this first session of the Smart Cities MOOC, we start by discussing what are smart cities,
and whether they are a hype or a reality. We must first start by understanding what is a city. Cities
can be understood as sociotechnical systems, a place where people live and work together. Cities
can further be understood through different dimensions; it can be an economic system, a place
where wealth, and a location in which jobs are generated. Due to the nature of concentration
of people and business in cities, there is an increase in the efficiency of production and thus
competitiveness of firms. Additionally, this concentration of people results in a concentration of
knowledge and innovation, as well as a diversity of specializations. This brings production and
the market closer together, and facilitates the process of trade and sharing. As such, they are the
economic powerhouses of the world [9]. Cities can also be seen as a social system, a way of life,
and with a separate culture, with its own activities, traditions and more. According to Luhmann,
a leading scholar of social systems, these “maintain in an overly complex environment a less
complex, meaningful context invariant and are thus able to orientate actions” [10]. These social
systems rely on communication, self-creation, differentiation, and structural coupling to particular
characteristics of their environments [10]. All these factors can be found in cities, and many factors
are even enhanced by them (such as communication).

Cities can also be considered as a political system, where different actors interact. Political sys-
tems have some basic characteristics; they take demands and support as inputs, while outputting
decisions, which are made by a set of coordinated and interdependent actors. The receptions of
these decisions will affect the input, thus building a feedback loop [11]. Additionally, they involve
the use or threat of use of legal force to enforce these decisions [12]. These aspects are found in
every city, embodied by their local governments and different political actors, such as citizens and
unions. Lastly, it is also a technological system, which are systems comprised of physical com-
ponents, such as infrastructure (bridges, roads, generators, etc.), as well as organizations (such
as manufacturing companies or utilities) and scientific components, such as research programs
[13, 14]. The technical systems view is the approach we use in this MOOC.

Figure 1: The different systems that comprise a city (Authors’ elaboration).

However, all these ways of viewing a city are true, as all systems interact with each other (for
instance, the economy affects the infrastructure). Within cities, and especially from a technolog-
ical perspective, there is a clear distinction between the different layers of the urban systems.
Traditionally, cities have two main layers, the infrastructure layer and the service layer. The ur-
ban infrastructure is what enables the living and working together, it is also known as the central
defining point of a city. It affects all dimensions, but is also affected by all of them. As such, in-

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frastructure can be seen as a sociotechnical system in its own right. Due to its great complexity,
it is therefore most accurate to have a systemic view of cities. This means that they have in them
feedback loops and path dependent decisions. There are three distinct types of feedback loops:
1) technical feedback loops (the effect that housing has on transport planning), 2) social feedback
loops (mainly how various actors interact in a city and how economic impacts social life), 3) feed-
back loops that cross both dimensions (an example being how certain technologies may affect
social life). The system and its feedbacks imply that cities will have certain performances, which
we characterize in terms of efficiency, resilience and sustainability. This high level of complexity
and interdependency of subsystems make the management and governance of cities extremely
challenging and unpredictable. A possible answer to this challenge is digitalization, and this is
where smart cities come into play.

2.3 What are Smart Cities?

Traditionally, systems are comprised of two main layers: an infrastructure and a service layer.
The main point that differentiates a smart city is the addition of a third layer in-between the original
two: a digital or data layer. This layer grows through the increasing number of sources for data
generation in cities, such as sensors, cameras, GPS, smart phones, and many others. These
data generation devices can be found at increasingly lower costs and sizes, making their use very
convenient. Additionally, their storage capacity has been growing exponentially, which means that
we are generating an unprecedented amount of data.

Figure 2: The data layer, a new layer, which defines smart cities (Authors’ elaboration).

This technological leap in urban systems is enabled by different technologies. The base of this
data layer is a legacy system, namely the telecommunications infrastructure (both cables and wire-
less), which allows for the physical transmission and storage of information. The second enabler
is the network layer. This means the connection of all devices through the telecommunications
infrastructure. This is done using specific protocols and systems such as the Internet. However,
it is also necessary to identify and exchange the data generated, which is done through the world-
wide web. This is the communications dimension that connects all the data. Finally, at the top of
this pyramid, you have the individual devices that generate and store data.

When you combine all the systems above, you get the Internet of Things (IoT): the connection
of different devices through the internet and the world-wide web. The evolution of this phenomena
is truly staggering. We have exponentially connected devices, and the amount of data being gen-
erated and transmitted is also growing fast. Additionally, this data is being transmitted increasingly
faster, in almost real time.

However, this amount of data poses a new challenge; the new data generated must be ana-
lyzed for it to be useful. This has led to the development of our capacity and ability to not only
analyze this data, but also visualize it in a way understandable to humans. Some of the tools used
to do so are, for instance, machine learning or artificial intelligence. This process of analysis of
large amounts of data is known as ”Big Data”.

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 Figure 3: The technologies that enabled the digital leap in cities (Authors’ elaboration).

2.4 Digitalization

The combination of all these trends in the evolution of information and communication tech-
nologies and their uptake in our society is called ”digitalization”. It has a disruptive effect in almost
all systems of our society, including cities. It has some severe implications on the more traditional
systems, such as value chains.

Figure 4: The building blocks of digitalization (Authors’ elaboration).

Through digitalization, physical value chains can be mirrored in a digital dimension, which
means customers can follow and influence this value chain (for instance, with tracking) by the
creation of customer interfaces. Additionally, the information in this data layer can now be used to
improve the value chain or create new services and business models which allow companies to
find new ways to profit from it. This affects many industries, which fall in four categories. Firstly, it
impacts very information intensive industries, such as health care, since now information can be
collected, stored and analyzed more efficiently. Secondly, it affects many non-scalable industries,
such as the taxi industry. This is because they are limited in size and digitalization helps them de-
velop new services to capitalize on. Thirdly, it influences fragmented industries, such as logistics,
as it helps connect the different actors. Finally, it impacts information asymmetric sectors, such
as government, by turning consumers into prosumers and empowering users.

Many of these categories coexist within the city level; therefore, digitalization has a heavy
impact on cities and urban infrastructures. The first major implication is on smart management of

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 Figure 5: The mirroring of the physical value chains using ICTs (Authors’ elaboration).

infrastructure, which helps increase efficiency and optimize value chains. However, these changes
and improvements are incremental. The second major implication is the development of new
services making use of the data layer, such as smart services and business models. These are
disruptive innovations that can effectively turn the City 1.0 into City 2.0, or Smart City.

2.5 Implications of Smart Cities

Since we have already defined digitalization and its effects, now we explore how it relates to
the concept of smart city. A smart city can be seen through the same dimensions as a traditional
city, but with different implications. From an economic perspective, you can see it as a digital
economy, which can help revitalize and stimulate the local economy using technology. From a
social perspective, a smart city is a way to stimulate online communities and revitalize social life.
The sharing economy can be seen as an intersection of the social and economic dimensions.
Additionally, smart cities can also be defined in a political dimension, which stimulate citizens’
involvement and participation through online decision making processes. Lastly, a smart city can
also be seen from a technological perspective, which pertains to its infrastructures and services.
This is the dimension of interest of this MOOC. Some examples of the technological dimension of
a smart city are for instance, the use of digital tools for toll collection, smart metering, water leak
detection or security systems.

There are four main implications of the development and transition into smart cities. The first is
in the management and governance of the infrastructures, which must now include a mix of man-
agement of old legacy infrastructures with the new smart ones. Secondly, there is the management
of the new services layer, which provides many challenges in terms of: execution, regulation, and
others. Thirdly, there is of course the challenge of governing the socio technical systems, which
entail governing the urban institutions and the rules of this system. Finally, there is also a novel
challenge, which is the management and governance of the data layer, a role, which is typically
not undertaken by cities but that they now must adapt to do.

2.6 Development and Implementation of Smart Cities

Now that we understand what smart cities are from a technical perspective, we can elaborate on
how the concept and architecture of the smart city is being developed and implemented. There are
two main visions being pushed forward. The first vision is that of vendors: hardware companies,
infrastructure companies and data management and analytics companies. These have embraced

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 Figure 6: Examples of Smart City Applications for Different Services (Authors’ elaboration).

the smart city concept because there is an opportunity to monetize on these technologies and
services being deployed at an urban level. In particular, infrastructure companies have embraced
it because they already have much on the legacy infrastructure in place, which can serve as the
basis for building a data layer. This perspective, basically, views users of smart cities as consumers
and is essentially a technology push approach; you provide technological solutions before a clear
demand signal for them, and expect users to uptake it. The second vision is from the city or
metropolitan area. They must also rely on vendors, however from their view, the smart city is
built to serve citizens and local businesses. In this perspective, users are viewed as citizens.
Additionally, due to the nature of government’s role, this is a demand-pull case; technologies are
implemented to answer an existing need of the population. While there is clearly an overlap in
these visions, they have important distinctions. The major persisting question in smart cities is
who will lead the transformation towards smart cities: the public or the private sector?

2.7 Conclusion

In this block we have conceptualized cities, and, more importantly, smart cities. We have
understood the mechanisms that have enabled and driven the trends of digitalization we see today.
We have also explored what digitalization is, and what are its implications for cities. Lastly, we
saw what the main challenges of the development and implementation of smart cities are. We will
now analyze the case study of the Smart City Barcelona to understand the role of digitalization in
a real-life smart city, and some of the opportunities and challenges that come with it.

3 Case Study: Smart City Barcelona

3.1 Background

Barcelona is capital of Catalonia, an autonomous province in Spain. Founded during the Middle
Ages, the city is a major tourist destination and especially famous for its art. It houses a population
of approximately 1,600,000 inhabitants, a number that has remained nearly constant over the
past 50 years. With an area of 102 km2, the population density is of 15,777 Hab/km2 [15]. The
Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, in turn, has a population of approximately 3.3 million inhabitants,
making it one of the most populated in Europe [16]. Barcelona’s GDP per capita of approximately

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40,100 Euros, while the metropolitan region’s GDP per capita is of 29,700 Euros. When taking
purchasing power parity into account, it is still slightly higher than the European average [17].

In terms of environmental impact, the city consumes approximately 4,216 kWh/year/capita,

or approximately, almost four times above the world average of 3 MWh/year and the above the
average of 8 MWh/year for OECD member states [18]. Of the consumed energy, approximately 4.5
percent are generated through renewable sources. Additionally, the city produces approximately
2.3 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year per inhabitant [19]. This puts Barcelona at the very low end
of the spectrum when compared to other global cities, with some reaching consumptions levels of
over 20 tones of CO2 equivalent per capita in 2006 [20].

Barcelona, as a part of Catalonia, has a turmoiled history of separatist feelings and attempts.
It has also had a turmoiled economic history, being the first city in Spain to embrace the Indus-
trial Revolution. However, the many wars in which Spain found itself involved with created great
economic fluctuations, such as the Napoleonic Wars, the Spanish Revolution and the 20th Cen-
tury World Wars. In the 1960s the city started to grow economically as well, with many workers
migrating to the area. This urban explosion created housing issues that remain to this day [21].

Additionally, Barcelona has been historically renowned worldwide for its unique urban planning
and art nouveau architecture. In the mid-19th century, engineer Ildefons Cerdà proposed a plan
that changed urban planning and Barcelona and influenced how other cities approached problems
of over crowdedness and uncontrolled population growth, and the issues that derive from it, such
as epidemics and traffic. He did so by studying how the working class lived, and scientifically
determining some of the basic needs of residents, such as the volume of atmospheric air each
citizen required. And based on this, he developed a plan to develop and connect additional villages
to Barcelona’s old district using grids of streets. In doing so, he coined the term “urbanization”,
which we use still use today [22].

In 1992 Barcelona was host to the Summer Olympic Games, perhaps one of the most transfor-
mative events for its urban life in recent history. These games brought forth a set of innovative and
progressive urban projects that permanently changed the city. Among many impacts, the 1992
Olympics led to a rethinking of urban planning in the city. The coastline was drastically reformed,
for instance, with the development of the beach areas helping revitalize the city. The construc-
tion sector saw a huge economic boom, with employment numbers going up significantly. Traffic
was improved by the construction of rings around the city. The service sector also underwent
significant growth. Overall, it is considered one of the most successful modern Olympic Games.
Unfortunately much of this growth stalled in the years immediately after the Olympics, due to a
global economic crisis. Despite that, Barcelona was able to withstand the crisis better than other
Spanish cities, and many of the impacts can still be seen and felt today [23].

A city which has been ahead of its times in many aspects, perhaps most famously in art,
Barcelona decided to undertake the endeavor of developing a Smart City, aiming at improving
urban efficiency and sustainability as well as the well-being of its residents.

The following section will outline Barcelona’s vision for a Smart City, its implementation, includ-
ing challenges faced, and current results of this project.

3.2 Background

3.2.1 The Vision

According to the City of Barcelona, the vision that led to the establishment of the Smart City
was of a city that is ”self-sufficient, with productive neighborhoods, living at a human speed and
producing zero emissions. A productive, open, inclusive and innovative city; a living city with
enterprising people and organized communities” [25]. The underlying strategy to achieve this

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 Figure 7: Legacy of the ’92 Olympic Games [24].

vision is to develop a more efficient management and governance of the city both in terms of the
service and infrastructure layers. This is being done by transversally integrating technology across
different areas of urban management. The areas were defined as:

• Public and Social Services

• Environment
• Mobility
• Companies and Business

• Research and Innovation

• Communications
• Infrastructures
• Tourism

• Citizen Cooperation
• International Projects

These projects highlight some of the main implications and perspectives of the digitalization
wave, such as new ways to govern the socio technical urban systems through citizen cooperation,
the active participation of vendors, the incremental innovations in the management of the infras-
tructure layer and the management of new and disruptive services using ICTs. These areas were
then subdivided into 22 different smart city programs, some of which are explored below.

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3.2.2 Digitalization as a Tool and as a Solution

The government of Barcelona sought to develop a Smart City by both integrating existing
projects and by identifying new opportunities for improvements in the city. The city had already
been using ICT solutions for over 10 years, however most departments operated independently.
Within the 10 areas defined by the city (mentioned above), programs were created in which digital-
ization is being used to enhance the well-being of the city’s citizens and businesses alike. These
encompass a wide range of topics, from open government to energy efficiency, from smart inno-
vation to smart mobility. It is also important to note the overlaps in the areas, for instance, mobility
is addressed under the umbrellas of: mobility, infrastructure, and environment. Similarly, urban
transformation is covered by environment, research and innovation, and infrastructures. This is
the embodiment of the vision of transversal integration of key management areas, as each area
is responsible for enacting different programs that combined will bring about, for instance, im-
proved mobility. This horizontal integration is enabled by the use of the data layer, that facilitates
and streamlines communications and data exchange among different stakeholders and intercon-
nected projects. Ensuring the proper communication between different stakeholder throughout
implementation and operation of these programs is a crucial step that inherently defines a smart
city: the ability to share data and utilize it to optimize and enhance urban planning and manage-
ment. The central idea of the Barcelona Smart City project is to make a city for the people. As
such, it strives to create: public involvement, knowledge dissemination, and bottom up innovation
[25]. For this reason, smart cities have relied heavily on digitalization strategies and the overlaying
of existing physical infrastructures with ICT technologies. This creates a data layer that mirrors the
value chain of many of their services (such as mobility or energy), and making management and
operation of these chains more efficient, and creating feedback loops that will allow for the future
improvement of these services. As such, the data layer allows the city of Barcelona to monitor
and manage services and infrastructure and to enhance service access to the general population,
while gaining useful feedback from the data generated that can be repurposed into better planning
for the future. These solutions are found under the Barcelona Digital City 2017-2020 plan. Some
of the projects covered by the smart city are: real time parking data, e-governance kiosks across
the city, smart metering, smart bins, electric cars, and many others. They cover a wide range
of applications of digitalization, such as: stimulating the economy, increasing public participation
and community engagement, improving the management of the urban infrastructures, and creat-
ing new services and solutions for urban challenges. In this section, we analyze a broad overview
of the implementation process, as well as two specific program implementations to serve as a
case study.

Data Sharing

One of the value propositions of the Smart City Barcelona is the idea of data sharing. Unlike all
other implications of a smart city, this is the one that is the least established in urban governance,
as it is a brand new level of complexity in urban systems. As such, it is a growing field with room
for significant innovation that is still finding its way through the challenges that must be overcome.
Much of the data from Barcelona’s smart projects is openly available online. For instance, citizens
and others can see data from smart bins, air quality and many other sensor data through Sentilo,
the software platform that integrates and manages the city’s many sensors. Sentilo is currently
managing over 15,000 sensors and has processed over one billion requests [26]. Sentilo is also
made open source and the code can be found in online repositories, and readily used by other
cities aiming to develop their own smart projects [27]. This is an example of how the data layer is
being connected to the infrastructure layer (for instance, the trash bins), to inform and empower
citizens, by giving them the ability to monitor the city’s performance. Additionally, by connecting
this entire infrastructure through a data-sharing platform, you are effectively connecting them to
the Internet of Things. The full potential of this has not been explored yet, but it is starting to. By

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installing sensors in everyday items and connecting them through the IoT, Barcelona can automate
much of the micromanagement of the city, by using the data layer to deploy specific instructions
and action items for all these devices and more.

Additionally, the city is also cooperating the City Protocol initiative, which aims to establish a
platform and standards for data gathering and sharing among cities. This project involves over
40 countries already, as well as 12 city projects. This way data can be easily compared and best
practices can be transferred across jurisdictions [28, 29].

Sensors for Urban Services: Smart Irrigation

One of the ways the smart city project is using ICTs is through the utilization of comprehensive
sensor data to manage services around the city and provide accurate information to citizens. The
city volunteered itself to become an urban lab, and is currently deploying this system through a
series of public private partnerships. These sensors are being used in new and creative ways: for
instance, on waste containers, it helps optimize collection schedules and routes. On the streets it
helps find parking spaces, and in parks in helps deploy an irrigation schedule. This is how mirroring
the city’s services value chain onto a data layer is helping them improve efficiencies, cut costs and
improve the quality of life of citizens. These innovations are incremental; the data layer is being
deployed to enhance services that were already provided by the existing legacy infrastructure.
This is effectively helping connect these two layers to increase the city’s productivity. However, to
do so, these existing infrastructures were transformed by the addition of data generating devices
such as sensors, as well as the implementation of a network that can connect the devices and
harvest their data for future analysis [30].

To understand this idea in further detail, we can look at the smart irrigation program [31].
Through a public private partnership with Starlab and Libelium, in situ probes containing soil
moisture sensors are being installed at Poblenou Park. Data from several sensors is gathered
wirelessly on a sensor platform (data gathering layer connected through a network), and it is then
transmitted to the cloud (identification and data exchange layer), through 3G technology (telecom-
munications infrastructure layer). This has connected the irrigation infrastructure to the Internet of
Things. This step towards digitalization has enabled the city to more efficiently decide on an irri-
gation schedule (both in terms of financial and environmental resources), thus helping Barcelona
to optimize its irrigation systems’ value chain. This optimization, making use of a data layer, has
already led to a reduction of the municipal water bill by 25 percent, a big saving not only in money
but also in natural resources.

In the case of smart irrigation, the layering of the technologies that enabled it is accomplished
on three levels: the first is the sensor level, as well as the integrating platform, which was in fact
made available for the public domain so that other cities can make use of it. This is an upgrade
of the legacy infrastructure to make them digitally enabled. The second is the creation of a data
platform called CityOS, which will integrate and analyze data collected by sensors around the city,
by creating models and predictive analysis tools. This is the development of a holistic data layer
that can be broken into smaller pieces according to who is accessing it. The final layer is the
data sharing to city management, its companies, and its citizens [32], which uses it to provide the
services to citizens and other organizations, such as the irrigation of parks.

3.2.3 Implementation and Challenges

The first step towards building a smart city was the creation of a ”Smart City Strategy” team
at the mayor’s office, which provided senior level leadership support to the program, as well as
centralized management and coordination of the project. A second key step was the establishment
of transparent communication with citizens and other stakeholders, as public support was needed

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to move the initiative forward, and the population needed to be informed of the reasoning behind
many of the proposed changes.

The top-down approach was invaluable when getting different departments to work together,
one of the key challenges of the Barcelona smart city project. As previously mentioned, the cen-
terpiece of this strategy was integration of previously existing and siloed projects. The support and
involvement of senior leadership provided the bridge necessary between the different stakeholders
and consolidated the projects which were already underway under this new umbrella.

A second challenging dimension of the implementation can be found in the effort to bring to-
gether players from both public and private sector, which is one of the main controversies in smart
cities. The technology and innovation necessary to bring about a smart city cannot be found in the
government alone, so the city relied heavily on large and small tech companies, which are often
not accustomed to being directly involved in public projects. This was done through tendering
and the establishment of public-private partnerships. The city of Barcelona clearly took charge
of the smart city transition, by partnering and finding areas of synergies with the vendors of the
technology and solutions necessary to achieve this vision. The users of smart cities are seen and
defined as citizens, and not as consumers. Lastly, Barcelona appears to be using a demand-pull
approach by creating a citizen centered smart city vision, in which it appears to create projects
that respond to the needs of the city and its citizens (such as decreasing budgets or improving
mobility) [32].

3.3 Results and Future Plans

While the Smart City Barcelona project is far from complete, some early results can already
be seen. Due to smart technologies, the city is saving EUR 58 million per year on water bills, and
has increased parking revenue by EUR 50 million a year. It has also created nearly 50,000 jobs
in the process of developing and deploying a smart city [32].

The success of the initial implementation of ICTs to increase efficiency, transparency and im-
prove the overall welfare of citizens and businesses alike has resulted in Barcelona being named
the innovation capital (iCapital) of Europe in 2014. It has also guaranteed Barcelona a prime spot
on Smart City rankings around the world, being considered 1st in the world by Juniper Research
in 2015 [33], 2nd by the Internet of Things Institute in 2016 [34].

This is still a pilot phase, and the next big step is to complete the development of the City
OS, which will help by creating additional integrational and analytical functions, and provide even
further optimization and engagement opportunities in the city.

3.4 Conclusion

Barcelona’s effort to spearhead the smart city revolution seems to be paying off. The digitaliza-
tion strategy is inclusive, encouraging public participation in different sectors and levels of urban
life. These advances aim at increasing efficiency and sustainability, opportunities for businesses,
and the welfare of all its citizens. Some of these objectives can already be seen at work, with the
city reporting significant financial savings. Their initiative in establishing a pioneer system and in
helping other cities in their own endeavors is also commendable, and an important step towards
urban collaboration and knowledge transfer. However, one can question whether the strategies
put forth by Barcelona are holistic enough. While the core strategy is horizontal integration, this
also puts forth several coordination problems, as well as a difficulty for top-down management and
sharing. Much of the smart city projects appear to have sprung from a bottom-up strategy, and at
this phase of implementation, it is still difficult to see how the different pieces will connect to bring
about a more holistic and efficient macro management of the city. While the Barcelona Smart City

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has many incredible merits, only with time we will be able to determine the effectiveness and the
success of the initiative in the long-term, including how data and privacy issues will be handled and
accepted by its citizens, and the real economic benefits that will come about from it, particularly
when compared to the economic costs of a smart city transition, and who will be the real winners
of the transition.

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