Evaluation of cities’ smartness by means of indicators for small and medium cities and communities: a methodology for Northern Italy

The need to develop policies that improve energy and environmental sustainability as well as technological innovation is the basis for the increase of the smartness of cities around the world. In the European Union, protocols were developed to measure the smartness of cities through indicators. These indicators however are tailored for large cities and do not fit the case of small cities in a satisfactory way. The paper develops a methodology for assessing smartness through indicators that is applicable to small and medium-size cities. The choice of the indicators is consistent with the ISO 37120 standard and it is inspired by the environmental indicators used in the Sustainable Energy Action Plan of the EU. The proposed methodology could be seen as an expansion of Governance strategies already partially adopted by many cities. The methodology is applied to 3 municipalities of northern Italy and the results obtained are discussed in the paper.