Co-creation for smart city solutions

The development of sustainable smart cities builds upon integrated and inclusive societies that allow inhabitants to co-create their living environment, fostering consistent dialogue among all stakeholders. It is equally based on modern ICT technologies as well as citizen engagement and institutional governance to deliver smart and inclusive solutions. The paper is based on an Horizon 2020 Project SMARTER TOGETHER, which is a joint project that aims to develop co-created smart and integrated solutions for low energy districts, sustainable mobility, integrated ICT infrastructures and citizen engagement within three lighthouse cities, further providing recommendations for follower cities and for all cities which are willing to support sustainable and resilient development. Within this project "being smart together" implies the need for a joint co-creative process within and between city and regional administrations and all relevant stakeholders. Thefore it is necessary to design a process and project structure allowing for a continuous organizational and peer-to-peer learning process and knowledge exchange between them. The questions that arise are how to get there and how to set up such a process? Therefore, the paper first presents the research methodology, consisting of the process itself as well as outlining the analog and digital peer-to-peer exchange vehicles developed for this purpose. On the one hand, so called "Project books" will provide the knowledge base for a fruitful peer-to-peer knowledge exchange among the cities and all local stakeholders and experts on an analog basis. On the other hand, the "Knowledge carrier" will be the major digital peer-to-peer "capsule" for information exchange and as measure for "information growth" within Smarter Together. The paper will exemplary draw upon the e-mobility projects to be realized in the three project lighthouse cities Lyon, Munich and Vienna. Finally, the paper discusses the transferability of the identified approaches and tries to illustrate possible strategies to replicate the co-creative process itself as well as the the innovative solutions in the field of emobility with the help of the tools.