Smart Cities in Spain – Policy, Sustainability, and the National Plan

Author(s):  
Martín García Vaquero ◽  
José Manuel Saiz-Alvarez

According to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro in 2012, half of humanity lives in cities. The urban population has increased from 750 million people in 1950 to 3,600 million in 2011. It is estimated that by 2030 almost 60% of the population world will reside in urban areas. In Spain already does more than 80%. This will lead to significant growth in the coming years, and cities must be prepared to serve new services on a sustainable way: from meeting the needs of potable water or clean air transport will be a challenge of extraordinary magnitude and an opportunity for the industry. The Spanish National Plan for Smart Cities is a continuation of different initiatives proposing to do a set of new political measures that involve the mobilization of resources that will put special emphasis on sustainability.

2020 ◽  
pp. 620-637
Author(s):  
Martín García Vaquero ◽  
José Manuel Saiz-Alvarez

According to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro in 2012, half of humanity lives in cities. The urban population has increased from 750 million people in 1950 to 3,600 million in 2011. It is estimated that by 2030 almost 60% of the population world will reside in urban areas. In Spain already does more than 80%. This will lead to significant growth in the coming years, and cities must be prepared to serve new services on a sustainable way: from meeting the needs of potable water or clean air transport will be a challenge of extraordinary magnitude and an opportunity for the industry. The Spanish National Plan for Smart Cities is a continuation of different initiatives proposing to do a set of new political measures that involve the mobilization of resources that will put special emphasis on sustainability.


2019 ◽  
pp. 178-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martín García Vaquero ◽  
José Manuel Saiz-Alvarez

According to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro in 2012, half of humanity lives in cities. The urban population has increased from 750 million people in 1950 to 3,600 million in 2011. It is estimated that by 2030 almost 60% of the population world will reside in urban areas. In Spain already does more than 80%. This will lead to significant growth in the coming years, and cities must be prepared to serve new services on a sustainable way: from meeting the needs of potable water or clean air transport will be a challenge of extraordinary magnitude and an opportunity for the industry. The Spanish National Plan for Smart Cities is a continuation of different initiatives proposing to do a set of new political measures that involve the mobilization of resources that will put special emphasis on sustainability.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (17) ◽  
pp. 4677 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gustavo Bermejo-Martín ◽  
Carlos Rodríguez-Monroy

There is currently a phenomenon of global urbanization, where in Europe intermediary cities play a major role by concentrating more than 40% of the European urban population. These types of cities have specific challenges regarding their sustainability and are key to meeting the objectives set out in the UN 2030 Agenda (United Nations, UN), due to their local character and proximity to the citizen. The intermediary cities of Andalusia in Spain, its urban sustainable development and its relationship with water are the object of analysis in this article. They are analyzed through the winning plans in the first call of the Spanish “Integrated Sustainable Urban Development Strategy ” (ISUDS). In this process, the citizens are the main actors through their participation in the elaboration of the ISUDS, in which they express the scope of the “hydrosocial contract ” of citizenship. The research presented in this article analyzes the latter through a methodological framework applied to the ISUDS, which shows the unequal interest of Andalusian intermediary cities when integrating water into their sustainable development. The article ends with a series of recommendations that make it possible to bring these cities closer to the “water sensitive cities ” stage.


Spatium ◽  
2012 ◽  
pp. 15-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena Zivanovic-Miljkovic ◽  
Tijana Crncevic ◽  
Igor Maric

Taking into consideration that growth of urban population has impacts on land use and that managing urban population change is one of the most important contemporary challenges, this paper deals with the sustainable development of peri-urban zones which represent important an environment where employment opportunities are developed and resources exploited (particularly agricultural resources) and environment where important recreational and leisure activities could be pursued. Within the review of current concepts and planning practices, the concepts of multifunctional agriculture and multifunctional landscapes in peri-urban zones are pointed out, as well as EU Developing Periurban Projects. The paper particularly focuses on the current situation in Serbia, where there is no specific legal basis for the planning of peri-urban areas, although there are positive examples of strategies, regulations and planning documents which treat agriculture and greenery in peri-urban zones in a sustainable manner.


ForScience ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. e00594
Author(s):  
Caik Elisio Tonelli Faria ◽  
Alexandre Augusto Barbosa

Problemas e catástrofes geradas por ações da natureza são cíclicos na história de nosso planeta.Um desses problemas, se não o principal e mais recorrente, são as inundações que vêm ocasionando diversos prejuízos tanto para a população quanto para os municípios em geral. Com o município de Itajubá-MG não é diferente. Principalmente por ter se desenvolvido às margens do rio Sapucaí, tem passado por problemas com inundações desde a sua fundação em 1819. No ano 2000, foi registrada uma das suas maiores inundações, que afetou 80% da sua população urbana. Atualmente, devido aos avanços da tecnologia, problemas referentes às inundações podem ser diagnosticados e evitados, utilizando-se programas computacionais, como Autocad e Global Mapper, com os quais, dentro deste trabalho, pôde-se se ter a real noção das áreas dentro do município em estudo susceptíveis a enchentes e inundações. Como principal resultado, observou-se uma mancha de inundação ocupando 65% da área urbana total do município, o que pode servir como base para realizar obras de prevenção e permitir um avanço municipal controlado. A partir desse levantamento pode-se ter a representação da fragilidade da cidade quanto a problemas ambientais decorrentes das chuvas torrenciais. Percebe-se a necessidade de um maior e melhor planejamento do crescimento urbano, por parte dos órgãos regulamentadores, adotando-se estratégias para o desenvolvimento eficiente e sustentável da região. Palavras-chave: Inundações. Planejamento. Problemas.   Flood spots in municipality of Itajubá-mg Abstract Problems and disasters generated by nature actions are cyclical in the history of our planet. One of these problems , maybe the major and most frequent, are the flooding which has been causing many losses for both the population and the municipalities in general. In the city of Itajubá -MG it is not different. Mainly because the city is located in the banks of the Sapucai river, it has experienced problems with flooding since its foundation in 1819. In 2000, the city faced one of its biggest floods, which affected 80% of its urban population. Currently, due to advances in technology, problems related to flooding can be diagnosed and prevented by using computer programs such as Autocad and Global Mapper, which ones, in this work, allow us to have a good idea about areas in the studied city, that could be potentially affected by floods. As the best result,  one flood spot occupying 65% of the urban area of the city was observed. The information can be used for preventing actions and as a base for a mediated growing. From this results, it is possible to measure how fragile is the city regarding to environmental problems related to storms, which requires that regulatory organizations make a bigger and better growing planning for the urban areas, applying strategies for the efficient and sustainable development in the region. Keywords: Floods. Planning. Problems.


Author(s):  
Olga Kolesnichenko ◽  
Lev Mazelis ◽  
Alexander Sotnik ◽  
Dariya Yakovleva ◽  
Sergey Amelkin ◽  
...  

AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic before mass vaccination can be restrained only by the limitation of contacts between people, which makes the digital economy a key condition for survival. More than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and many cities have already transformed into “smart” digital/virtual hubs. Digital services ensure city life safe without an economy lockout and unemployment. Urban society strives to be safe, sustainable, well-being, and healthy. We set the task to construct a hybrid sociological and technological concept of a smart city with matched solutions, complementary to each other. Our modeling with the elaborated digital architectures and with the bionic solution for ensuring sufficient data governance showed that a smart city in comparison with the traditional city is tightly interconnected inside like a social “organism”. Society has entered a decisive decade during which the world will change by moving closer towards SDGs targets 2030 as well as by the transformation of cities and their digital infrastructures. It is important to recognize the large vector of sociological transformation as smart cities are just a transition phase to human-centered personal space or smart home. The “atomization” of the world urban population raises the gap problem in achieving SDGs because of different approaches to constructing digital architectures for smart cities or smart homes in countries. The strategy of creating smart cities should bring each citizen closer to SDGs at the individual level, laying in the personal space the principles of sustainable development and wellness of personality.


2002 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-107
Author(s):  
Muhammad Akram ◽  
Lubna Shahnaz ◽  
Surayya Surayya

Migration plays a pivotal role in the reallocation of human resources under changing demand and supply conditions. Migration takes place when an individual decides that it is preferable to move rather than to stay and where the difficulties of moving seem to be less than the expected rewards. In recent years there has been a trend of increasing migration rates. The United Nations (2000) estimates that about 140 million persons (roughly 2 per cent of the world’s population) reside in a country where they are not born.1 Usually migration takes place from the regions that are associated with poverty and insecurity towards regions which offer greater security of life, employment and basic social services. Poverty pushes people to migrate to urban areas-the outcome, the world’s urban population approaches 2.3 billion by 1990 with 61 per cent living in the metropolitan areas of developing countries and touches 66 per cent in 2000 (United Nations). Within the world Asia has about 15 of the largest cities of the world and most of them are growing at more than 5 per cent per annum. Increased rate of natural growth, immigration and rural-urban migration might be the causes of such a high rate of growth of urban population.


Author(s):  
Nina Danilina

Modern urban planning educational trend defines the sustainable development of smart cities as one of the most dynamic areas of city policies around the world. A smart city is a high-tech urban living environment in which innovative solutions are embedded in its constituent elements and processes to improve its quality and living standards. The concept of a smart city is aimed at sustainable development of urban areas and offers technology as a tool for solving problems in the field of planning, design, integrated engineering landscaping, as well as in the provision of urban services to the population. The article discusses the contents of the smart city concept, which reflects the main directions of the curriculum of the master's program «Sustainable Smart City». Its main purpose is to prepare urban planners who have professional competencies in the development of smart cities in the implementation of urban processes.


Geomatics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-147
Author(s):  
Courage Kamusoko ◽  
Olivia Wadzanai Kamusoko ◽  
Enos Chikati ◽  
Jonah Gamba

Accurate and current land cover information is required to develop strategies for sustainable development and to improve the quality of life in urban areas. This study presents an approach that combines multi-seasonal Sentinel-1 (S1) and Sentinel-2 (S2) data, and a random forest (RF) classifier in order to map land cover in four major urban centers in Zimbabwe. The specific objective of this study was to assess the potential of multi-seasonal (rainy, post-rainy, and dry season) S1, rainy season S2, post-rainy season, dry season S2, multi-seasonal S2, and multi-seasonal composite S1 and S2 data for mapping land cover in urban areas. The study results show that the combination of multi-seasonal S1 and S2 data improve land cover mapping in urban and peri-urban areas relative to only multi-seasonal S1, mono-seasonal S2, and multi-seasonal S2 data. The overall accuracy scores for the multi-seasonal S1 and S2 land cover maps are above 85% for all urban centers. Our results indicate that rainy and post-rainy S2 spectral bands, as well as dry-season S1 VV and VH bands (ascending orbit) are the most important features for land cover mapping. In particular, S1 data proved useful in separating built-up areas from cropland, which is usually problematic when only optical imagery is used in the study area. While there are notable improvements in land cover mapping, some challenges related to the S1 data analysis still remain. Nonetheless, our land cover mapping approach shows a potential to map land cover in other urban areas in Zimbabwe or in Sub-Sahara Africa. This is important given the urgent need for reliable geospatial information, which is required to implement the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) and United Nations New Urban Agenda (NUA) programmes.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 00007
Author(s):  
Joanna Bąk

Every modern city in the 21st century should enable its residents to quickly and easily move to other cities within the country, Europe and the world. This is very often implemented through air transport. An inseparable element of this type of conveyance is the presence of facilities such as airports in the vicinity of cities. In 2015, a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals [1] was established by the United Nations. Their task is, inter alia, environmental protection. These goals should also be taken into account in the management of passenger airports. The article presents a critical review of the feasibility of selected sustainable development goals through solutions in the field of environmental engineering. These include green walls and roofs, the use of renewable energy, and devices that effectively save water and energy. Then, an analysis of the possibilities of their application at passenger airports was carried out. The use of devices increasing the efficiency to achieve sustainable development goals for already implemented solutions was also taken into account. Sometimes a simple and inexpensive investment can significantly improve the quality of natural resources protection.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document