Le città metropolitane alla prova della Smart Governance

The contribution describes the results of the research project "Governance Analysis Project Smart Energy City. Implementation of Smart Energy Cities in metropolitan areas in Europe, in Italy, and in the convergence regions". The programme aims at verifying what Italian cities are trying out with regard to application of the Smart City paradigm, also in the light of the process of transformation of the institutional system being dealt with by the cities after the introduction of Law no. 56/2014. This has meant, on the one hand, verifying the level of propensity of Italian metropolitan areas for adopting a smart approach; on the other hand, by collecting the critical literature about what is being tried by cities from the smart viewpoint, a thorough study was made of the initiatives that could help metropolitan cities to deal with the tasks assigned to them by the law. The metropolitan cities investigated were the ten identified in Law no. 56/2014 (Bari, Bologna, Florence, Genoa, Milan, Naples, Reggio Calabria, Rome, Turin and Venice) as well as Palermo and Catania. About 1,000 smart initiatives (actions, researches, technologies etc.) were identified during the research, and were classified and analysed using a single interpretation grid for all the cities. From an analysis of what is being tried we can define a kind of "taxonomy" of Italian metropolitan cities in relation to the "cut" adopted in applying the smart city paradigm to urban development. Just as a series of things to ponder appear, about what the foreseeable developments in the adoption of the smart approach might be, but in particular about what the main critical aspects to be dealt with are.