Smart cities and urban networks: are smart networks what we need?

Abstract

Metropolitan areas have become very important subjects at political, social and economic levels. They draw information from sources of data and official statistics aimed to operate classification in a quite static way. In parallel, the idea of a smart city has been largely promoted in recent years, becoming a paradigm of continuous transformation. However, cities have been called smart in so many ways that it is almost impossible to formulate any generally accepted prioritization. Owing to the role of social media, which is now dominant in modern societies, we evaluate the impact of urban networks in the metropolitan area context. In particular, we revisit the latter in light of the functions of networks referred to transportation systems and ‘big data’ associated to them. We measure the impact of both transportation networks and big data networks, establishing their centrality and addressing the current needs.

Keywords:

• smart cities
• metropolitan areas
• networks