How Are Medium-Sized Cities Implementing Their Smart City Governance? Experiences from the Emilia-Romagna Region

Within the smart city debate, this paper aims to reflect on whether and how medium-sized Italian cities are organizing their smart transition technically as well as administratively. The smart city concept was developed in the 1990s when major European cities began a smart transition through widespread urban regeneration projects and the introduction of advanced technologies applied not only to the physical city but also to governance, policymaking, and communication, involving multiple sectors of city administrations. In the last decade, medium-sized cities have also started this transition process, although with lower emphasis than metropolitan cities. In most medium-sized Italian cities, this transition, in accordance with national and regional guidelines, has sometimes led to competencies reorganization within local governments. Within this framework, the paper examines the tools with which medium-sized Italian cities’ administrations address the smart transformation in their territories, comparing a sample of 10 cities in Emilia-Romagna and considering policymaking, governance structure, past and current projects, and communication transparency. The expected result is therefore a systematic review of experiences to reconstruct a complex picture of the political and administrative choices that have led to the implementation or setting in motion of smart transformation processes to draw some useful lessons.