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SMART COMMUNITIES

SMART

COMMUNITIES

There is an urgent need to rethink the models of socio-economic development to make them more consistent with the new social needs such as livability and social inclusion. Social innovation is an modern practice with the aim of creating a positive impact on society that is as inclusive and wide as possible. How to involve community in the processes of innovation as a key element of urban regeneration? Technology facilities, networks and intangible infrastructures, cloud computing and electronics must be understood only as instruments whose value is the finalization towards objectives of smart growth, sustainable and inclusive character of the cities. Smart cities must create conditions to answer to social problems. It is to be understood as the capacity, the ability, the strength of a society to understand, analyze and solve its social and environmental problems and to define form and shape of ideas, actions, strategies, processes and projects whose impact is to benefit of the community and not individual promoters. The practices of social innovation, does not respond only in an new way to specific needs, but also offer new ways of decision making and action, through the creation of networks and using forms of coordination and cooperation rather than vertical forms of control (M. Bencardino, I. Greco). The potential impact of an innovative practice on the social context is much higher as inclusive as is the process of community involvement, an involvement not passive, but projected to action: the community does not participate only at the phases of experimentation and testing of application solutions proposed, but it answers to the problems of its living places by developing specific projects (Harris and Albury, 2009).

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