Smart, Resilient, and Transition Cities: Commonalities, Peculiarities and Hints for Future Approaches

The chapter discusses commonalities and peculiarities of the three Urban Metaphors presented in the previous chapters of this book: Smart City, Resilient City and Transition Towns, exploring meanwhile the potential for strengthening their synergies to promote integrated approaches to climate issues. In the last decade, these Metaphors have gained, indeed, a growing attention by planners and decision-makers since all of them, although by different perspectives, aim at empowering cities in the face of the more and more interconnected challenges currently threatening them as well of the growing uncertainties arising from the ways that natural and human systems will develop and interact in the next future. In detail, in this chapter after a brief overview of the three Metaphors, we will focus on their commonalities and peculiarities, with the aim to better understand their respective roles in supporting climate strategies as well their potential synergies and conflicting aspects.