IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jknowl/v4y2013i2p135-148.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Smart City Initiative: the Case of Barcelona

Author

Listed:
  • Tuba Bakıcı
  • Esteve Almirall
  • Jonathan Wareham

Abstract

Information and communication technology is changing the way in which cities organise policymaking and urban growth. Smart Cities base their strategy on the use of information and communication technologies in several fields such as economy, environment, mobility and governance to transform the city infrastructure and services. This paper draws on the city of Barcelona and intends to analyse its transformation from a traditional agglomeration to a twenty-first century metropolis. The case of Barcelona is of special interest due to its apparent desire, reflected by its current policies regarding urban planning, to be considered as a leading metropolis in Europe. Hence, an assessment of the Smart City initiative will cast light on the current status of Barcelona’s urban policy and its urban policy of Barcelona and its future directions. This article analyses Barcelona’s transformation in the areas of Smart City management; drivers, bottlenecks, conditions and assets. First, it presents the existing literature on Barcelona’s Smart City initiative. Then, the case study analysis is presented with the Barcelona Smart City model. After describing this model, we further explore the main components of the Smart City strategy of Barcelona in terms of Smart districts, living labs, initiatives, e-Services, infrastructures and Open Data. This paper also reveals certain benefits and challenges related to this initiative and its future directions. The results of the case study analysis indicate that Barcelona has been effectively implementing the Smart City strategy with an aim to be a Smart City model for the world. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2013

Suggested Citation

  • Tuba Bakıcı & Esteve Almirall & Jonathan Wareham, 2013. "A Smart City Initiative: the Case of Barcelona," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 4(2), pages 135-148, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:jknowl:v:4:y:2013:i:2:p:135-148
    DOI: 10.1007/s13132-012-0084-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s13132-012-0084-9
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s13132-012-0084-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Villalba, Gara & Gemechu, Eskinder Demisse, 2011. "Estimating GHG emissions of marine ports--the case of Barcelona," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 1363-1368, March.
    2. Robert G. Hollands, 2008. "Will the real smart city please stand up?," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(3), pages 303-320, December.
    3. Caragliu, A. & Del Bo, C. & Nijkamp, P., 2009. "Smart cities in Europe," Serie Research Memoranda 0048, VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Econometrics.
    4. Jaume Garcia & Josep Maria Raya, 2011. "Price and Income Elasticities of Demand for Housing Characteristics in the City of Barcelona," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(5), pages 597-608.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. De Santis, Roberta & Fasano, Alessandra & Mignolli, Nadia & Villa, Anna, 2014. "Smart city: fact and fiction," MPRA Paper 54536, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Enrico di Bella & Matteo Corsi & Lucia Leporatti, 2015. "A Multi-indicator Approach for Smart Security Policy Making," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 122(3), pages 653-675, July.
    3. Kamila Borsekova & Katarina Petrikova & Anna Vanova, 2015. "Building of smart cities in specific conditions of transitional economies," ERSA conference papers ersa15p1030, European Regional Science Association.
    4. Diogo Correia & Leonor Teixeira & João Lourenço Marques, 2021. "Reviewing the State-of-the-Art of Smart Cities in Portugal: Evidence Based on Content Analysis of a Portuguese Magazine," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-30, October.
    5. Walravens, Nils, 2015. "Qualitative indicators for smart city business models: The case of mobile services and applications," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 218-240.
    6. Walravens, Nils, 2014. "A critical exploration of the Brussels app economy and mobile city services scene," 25th European Regional ITS Conference, Brussels 2014 101383, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    7. Lim Seng BOON & Jalaluddin Abdul MALEK & Mohd Yusof HUSSAIN & Zurinah TAHIR, 2020. "Understanding the trends and characteristics of smart urbanism across continents," Smart Cities and Regional Development (SCRD) Journal, Smart-EDU Hub, vol. 4(1), pages 23-35, March.
    8. Roberta De Santis & Alessandra Fasano & Nadia Mignolli & Anna Villa, 2015. "A primer on city "smartness" measurement," RIVISTA DI ECONOMIA E STATISTICA DEL TERRITORIO, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2015(2), pages 34-51.
    9. Kyunam Kim & Jung-Kyu Jung & Jae Young Choi, 2016. "Impact of the Smart City Industry on the Korean National Economy: Input-Output Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(7), pages 1-19, July.
    10. María Verónica Alderete, 2020. "Exploring the Smart City Indexes and the Role of Macro Factors for Measuring Cities Smartness," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 147(2), pages 567-589, January.
    11. Amel Attour & Alain Rallet, 2014. "Le rôle des territoires dans le développement des systèmes trans-sectoriels d'innovation locaux : le cas des smart cities," Innovations, De Boeck Université, vol. 0(1), pages 253-279.
    12. Mora, Luca & Deakin, Mark & Reid, Alasdair, 2019. "Combining co-citation clustering and text-based analysis to reveal the main development paths of smart cities," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 56-69.
    13. Desdemoustier, Jonathan & Crutzen, Nathalie & Giffinger, Rudolf, 2019. "Municipalities' understanding of the Smart City concept: An exploratory analysis in Belgium," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 129-141.
    14. Dorel N Manitiu & Giulio Pedrini, 2015. "Smart and sustainable cities in the European Union. An ex ante assessment of environmental, social, and cultural domains," SEEDS Working Papers 1315, SEEDS, Sustainability Environmental Economics and Dynamics Studies, revised Jul 2015.
    15. Grimaldi, Didier & Fernandez, Vicenc & Carrasco, Carlos, 2019. "Heuristic for the localization of new shops based on business and social criteria," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 249-257.
    16. Lee, Jung Hoon & Hancock, Marguerite Gong & Hu, Mei-Chih, 2014. "Towards an effective framework for building smart cities: Lessons from Seoul and San Francisco," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 80-99.
    17. Kardes, Ilke, 2016. "Reaching middle class consumers in emerging markets: Unlocking market potential through urban-based analysis," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 703-710.
    18. Mundula, Luigi & Auci, Sabrina, 2013. "Smart Cities and a Stochastic Frontier Analysis: A Comparison among European Cities," MPRA Paper 51586, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Lombardi, P. & Giordano, S. & Caragliu, A. & Del Bo, C., 2011. "An advanced triple-helix network model for smart cities performance," Serie Research Memoranda 0045, VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Econometrics.
    20. Ben Letaifa, Soumaya, 2015. "How to strategize smart cities: Revealing the SMART model," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(7), pages 1414-1419.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:jknowl:v:4:y:2013:i:2:p:135-148. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.