GUIDELINES AND GOOD PRACTICES IN STRATEGIES, INITIATIVES AND MANAGEMENT OF SMART CITY PROJECTS IN SMALL CITIES

Abstract

In recent years, the concept of Smart City has been widely accepted as a model of urban development and transformation and as a strategy to face the global challenges that cities must address in terms of sustainability, efficiency, integration, resilience, and ultimately improvement of the quality of life of its inhabitants. Most of the comparative studies and assessment models are developed based on large urban centres and several authors consider the need for models adapted to the characteristics of smaller cities. Compared with large cities, with a more robust structure and an evident superiority in technical, administrative and economic-financial resources to face transformation processes, small cities present specific characteristics that make direct extrapolation and direct scalability of projects and initiatives pretty difficult. This paper identifies guidelines and good practices in strategy and Smart City projects management specific for these urban centres, which help decision-making in its transformation processes and set strategies and guidelines considering its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, focused in the challenges they must face. Keywords: Smart cities; project management; assessment models.