Sociable Smart Cities: rethinking our future through co-creative partnerships

The challenges of tomorrow’s society demand new ways of innovation – a shift in thinking, doing and organising. It requires releasing existing paradigms, changing perspectives and doing things differently. In the current work, we envision a sociable smart city that enables transforming society into a more participative domain where participatory innovation takes place. A city that combines best a two worlds; on the one hand, a social city that is people-centred, values active citizenship and embraces community-driven innovation, and, on the other, a smart city that welcomes the possibility of Future Internet and related technology-driven innovations, such as Open Data, Internet of Things and Living Labs offer. The biggest challenges cities face is not the technology, but having an open mindset and a participatory attitude to rethink our future is far more challenging.