Perspectives and ways forward City executives should be aware of the difficulty of rising to ways: financing infrastructure, operating systems, and developing challenges such as fighting global warming and reducing innovation. Moreover, based on their vision and engagement, city carbon footprints. Most of them should know their priorities: governments will do their best to identify short- and long-term developing and sharing a vision for the future, implementing priorities. However, they face certain conflicts. For example, both sustainability initiatives and policies, and verifying that all scaling back funding for public operations in order to reduce stakeholders are both aware of challenges and well involved in deficits means not being able to finance urban transformation, both decision and processes. Among these priorities, smart, while reducing investments in improving operating systems will sustainable, and inclusive cities are already enabling the goal of limit scope for modernization. They should also consider offering attracting investment from private financing actors and public innovative entrepreneurs the chance to fill in some of the gaps, investors around the world (Eden Strategy Institute, 2018). mostly in the area of services (for example, digital platforms, Innovative solutions are not limited to digital technologies. mobility as a service, and energy grids). They also cover energy-saving solutions, public transportation, soft mobility, and new services. These new systems and the Indeed, cities are the right location for innovation, and they businesses that operate them can make city operations work have proved to be hotbeds for it. When it comes to developing better as well as consume fewer resources. For some analysts, new services in particular, there is plenty of room for both “Smart technologies can help cities meet these challenges... It established organizations and newcomers to add something to all starts with data.” 1We definitively do not share this exclusively the real-life experiment that is the smart and sustainable city. technology-based approach to urban transformation. In the context of cities, the all-important quality of resilience is all about ceaseless self-reinvention over time, the goal Based on our thorough analysis of six smart cities, we have being to innovate in order to rise to Grand Challenges such as shown that urban transformation requires the convergence of reducing carbon footprints, saving resources (including land, three factors: water, and biodiversity), lowering energy consumption, and •A vision developed by the team in charge of running the city; safeguarding residents’ health and well-being. New activities, •Strong involvement of companies in delivering solutions and businesses, and solutions will help cities to accelerate the pace sharing value; of these essential changes. More generally, offering a better •Active collaboration involving different stakeholders. quality of life in cities for as many people as possible will be the way to evaluate whether urban transformation is adequately In the short term, we anticipate that new infrastructure systems contributing to the common good. and new services will alter urban life in increasingly profound and personal ways. Our assessment indicates that some trends This last chapter contains three parts. First, we deliver a short are already being addressed while others are not; this is why comparative assessment of the six cities that we examined. the vision of city teams, private companies’ involvement, and Second, we discuss the main challenges for cities that we citizens’ participation are all crucial. identified when we looked beyond our sample of six cities by reading interviews, attending workshops and conferences, City governments have to find the right combination of vision, and conducting further reading. Finally, we offer a couple of public policies, investment, technologies, and partnerships. recommendations to the three most important players within any Complementing those elements, the quality of governance, urban ecosystem: city governments, companies, and civil society. the way in which different ecosystems are managed, and the involvement of stakeholders in decision-making processes will No two cities are alike allow cities to set their own starting points and identify their residents’ priorities. National-level policy makers can create policies that drive the redesign of our economic and social systems and have We have observed that some cities are already enabling new forms public health and economic prosperity as their primary of public and public-private investment as well as innovations. To goals. Some take the view that “city governments cannot tackle climate and environmental emergencies, cities have to address the challenges of reducing emissions alone” (WEF, leave ample room for the private sector. It can contribute in three 2021). Under this interpretation, the future of cities would (1) McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) (2018). Smart Cities: Digital Solutions for a More Livable Future.June. 152 p. 223 Quélin and Smadja | HEC PARIS | SMART CITIES | The sustainable program of six leading cities | 2021