ABSTRACT
Despite the research efforts and the growing number of articles the concept of smart city has not yet found a common qualification nor a testable definition. In this application the domains of smartness are obtained from the official data of the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat) describing the adoption of smart policies in the urban environment (ICT use, smart mobility, green innovation, sustainable governance etc.). The information, referred to all the Italian chief towns (116 cities), has been normalized and synthetized with statistical techniques in order to derive a taxonomy for the smartness’ domains. Then the performances have been analysed for each domain, with regards to the geographic location of cities. The spatial interactions are examined through localized spatial autocorrelation. The results show a significant territorial discrepancy which go beyond the well-known Italian North-South polarization. There is evidence of localized clustering and interactions among neighbouring cities.
