The Smart City Metaphor to Foster Collaborative and Adaptive Decision-Making Processes in the Face of Climate Issues

The chapter deals with the Smart City metaphor, outlining its potential for empowering a climate sensitive urban development. Starting from a brief introduction of the Smart City metaphor, the contribution focuses on the persisting dichotomy between a techno-centered and a human-centered perspective, which are basis to different goals and objectives of the Smart City initiatives. In detail, the former perspective, and the most widespread one so far, has led to mainly focus on mitigation issues, contributing to the achievement of the limited (although desirable) goal to optimize existing infrastructures and services to reduce greenhouse gas emission and increase energy efficiency. Nevertheless, based on the human-centered perspective, the Smart City concept could embed more than merely mitigation, allowing the establishment of collaborative and continuously learning decision-making processes, crucial to enhance the transition towards a climate-sensitive urban development.