Smart cities and urban manufacturing are the subject of a reflection that starts from the University of Bologna and is amplified by the voices of Riccardo Leoncini and Giulio Pedrini.
A reflection, this on the smart city, which tends to identify the economic logics that can collate the paradigm of the new urban manufacturing.
The rediscovery of transformation activities based on small scale, creativity and access to new technologies (just think of 3D printers).
Hence the rapid change in business models to front the need to find modular solutions for a finished product that is much more adaptable than in the past.
Smart cities, therefore, as a convenience in small-scale productions?
This is the one of the basis for the reflection. Provided that the small scales dialogues with the needs of consumers in a constant, continuous. With the result of substantially reducing the environmental impacts.
So where can we coordinate design trends and design trends and have our potential customers at hand in order to listen to them and satisfy their explicit or implicit needs?
In a place where infrastructural accessibility is convenient, where there are transport nodes, where the presence of skilled workers is more dense. In short, in the smart city.
Of course, this represents a sort of reboot.
Where the city has developed in the past due to the concentration of large industrial clusters, now the smart city develops around the growth of services, the relocation, even if on a different scale, of the activities ejected in previous decades.
Even if the tendency towards a re industrialization is not even present in the needs of the new scenario painted by the industry 4.0.
Smart cities: places where a coordinated set of interventions elaborate the ejecencies of the environmental, social and cultural context of the territory, places where competitiveness and sustainability are ingredients for a strengthening of the tangible and intangible infrastructures, where the institutions that deal with research and knowledge transfer such as universities, incubators.
On the smart city, Leoncni and Pedrini conclude:
“The choice to locate small manufacturing activities in areas that are expensive and likely to be destined for alternative uses will be justified, in our opinion, not so much for their direct employment contribution, but to the extent that this choice will be able to induce entire urban eco-system thanks to the greater variety that these activities imply. In particular, the establishment of small and medium-sized productive activities will have a positive impact on urban space with a view to regenerating certain specific areas, such as those neighborhoods and suburbs of our cities hit hard by the crisis and the failure of development projects focused on residency and commercial services. “
