Edinburgh Napier University

  Smart city development exposes the coevolutionary nature of technology and society, as well as the systemic character of innovation. Bringing new technologies into society is not sufficient to improve the sustainability of urban functions. For this goal to be achieved, a sociotechnical transition path must be created through complementary transformational changes, whose cumulative effects make it possible to replace a stabilized technological trajectory with a new configuration that works. During this transformation process, that we call smart city transition, the sociotechnical elements of an urban environment (i.e. organizations, culture, policy and regulations, technology, markets, and physical urban infrastructure components) are subject to multi-dimensional changes which enable the introduction of new smart city technologies into the built environment.