Constructing human smart cities

Although current technology-driven implementations of Smart Cities is an important step in the right direction, it fall short in exploiting the most important dimension of cities — the Human dimension. In a Human Smart City, people rather than technology are the true actors of the urban “smartness”. The creation of a participatory innovation ecosystem in which, citizens and communities interact with public authorities and knowledge developers, in a collaborative mode, exploiting the power of co-designed user centered innovation services, is the driving force. This also calls for new governance models that lead to the urban transformation where citizens are the main “drivers of change” and through their empowerment and motivation the major city challenges can be addressed including sustainable behaviour transformation, creating a Better and Happier Society.