Promoting smartness among local areas in a Southern Italian region: The Smart Basilicata Project

Making cities smarter and more competitive is one of the major challenges of climate change and energy security. Smart city initiatives have arisen Europe-wide to help cities to start planning their future in a new way to become more sustainable and resilient. New business models need to be investigated to foster local business development, innovative local administrations and industries, valorize the cultural heritage and the research outcomes and promote community’s participation. This transition is even more complex and necessary for sparsely populated regions with poor infrastructures in the buildings, manufacturing and transport domains and with a multi-layer local governance (e.g. Italian Towns, Provinces and Region). In this case, a widespread concept of smart city can be applied proposing systematic strategies for urban innovation with a regional-wide perspective. This paper focuses on a coordinated project aimed to promote smartness among local areas in a small region in Southern Italy (Basilicata). The ‘Smart Basilicata’ project constitutes a unique example in which, by working together, multi-layer public authorities, private enterprises, research organizations and universities drafted the basis for a regional strategy for smart-related issues.