Towards Sustainable Communities within Urban Ecosystems

Cities of tomorrow should evolve as sustainable communities that promote social and economic growth and development, and contribute to creating public value within urban services ecosystems. The aim of the study is to elucidate how cities can identify some pathways to develop the city as sustainable urban community. Cities as sustainable and smart communities should promote continuous innovation within knowledge-based, technological-enabled and learning-oriented society. Cities should select a pathway for sustainability promoting smartness as strategic and cultural vision that helps design and production of citizen-centred services, driving urban organisational networks and cooperation to develop knowledge management and innovation systems. As sustainable communities, cities should select a sustainability-oriented pathway to develop the community, enabling all the stakeholders to actively play a key role to support innovation and urban value creation. Cities should use technology in order to design a human-centered and community-oriented urban strategy for growth and development engaging urban stakeholders in innovation processes and systems, investing in urban intelligence as engines of sustainable development.