The architecture of intelligent cities: integrating human, collective and artificial intelligence to enhance knowledge and innovation

Abstract

Intelligent communities and cities (IC) belong to an emerging movement targeting the creation of environments that improve cognitive skills and abilities to learn and innovate. They represent environments that enable superior cognitive capabilities and creativity to be collectively constructed from combinations of individual cognitive skills and information systems that operate in the physical, institutional, and digital spaces of cities. Two academic traditions have been feeding the discussion concerning intelligent communities and cities: the literature on innovative environments and the planning of digital cities. Following an introduction on the meaning of ICs, we discuss the structuring of innovative environments such as clusters, technology districts and territorial systems of innovation, which rely on different architectures of knowledge networks enhancing product, process, and organizational innovation. Then we turn to digital cities and examine their concept, architecture, and constituent elements. In the final section of the paper we describe intelligent cities as overlapping of innovative clusters and digital cities. Intelligent cities integrate knowledge-intensive activities and clusters; embedded routines of social cooperation enabling knowledge sharing and innovation; advanced communication infrastructure and digital spaces for knowledge and innovation management; and proven ability to innovate and resolve problems that appear for the first time, since the capacity to innovate and manage uncertainty are critical factors in characterizing intelligence. (8 pages)