Mobility and the Smart City. Innovative Solutions for Responsive Urban Spaces.

In the late years the expression ‘smart city’ is being used to define sentient urban contexts, capable to connect citizens and provide innovative solutions to their everyday needs. Cities are redefining themselves as stages for innovation and pervasive technologies are gaining a growing relevance in our everyday lives. Municipalities and researchers tend to underline the crucial role of collaborative patterns, involving citizens as active stakeholders in the value-generation process, towards solutions capable to improve the quality of their urban experience. As people are called to share the same urban spaces, possible conflicts may take place between personal interests and collective requirements; social life becomes therefore a sort of peace-treaty in which the tendency towards social equality and the individual tendency to stand out ought to find a balance. This is particularly evident in the field of urban transport, since the individual is called to recast his identity in terms of flexibility, adaptability and instant transformation, in order to adjust his own interests to the social requirement for a more sustainable mobility. The following dissertation intends to introduce a transdisciplinary overview of current urban trends, and of their possible evolution towards innovative solutions for the mobility needs of our tomorrow’s cities.