• New and emerging technologies could help cities improve public services (including mobility and well-being), better interact with citizens, increase productivity, and address environmental and sustainability challenges.
• The paradigm of 'smart cities' has spread, with more than 250 smart city projects in 178 cities worldwide in 2017. Cities have generally got into partnership with private technology corporations that provide cities with ready-made or customised (hardware and software) solutions to collect data and extract insights on relevant urban issues. Urban data produced in cities are collected, analysed and used for urban management and for developing data-driven decision making. They present a great potential to improving both the reactivity of cities and their efficiency.  Outcomes of this approach to the ‘smart cities’ paradigm are various and sometimes debatable.
• Emerging technologies also raise several issues; appropriate and consistent legislation (including data privacy and ownership), data sharing and standards, and cybersecurity. Furthermore  it is necessary to plan for system redundancy and resilience.
• Although capital cities and big metropolitan areas remain major drivers of creativity and innovation, favourable conditions can also be found in smaller cities, as showed by the EU smart cities ranking developed by TU Wien (2007-2014).

| Related Megatrends: Demography; Geopower; Security; Inequalities; Health; Climate change and environmental degradation; Consumerism; Technology; Natural resources;