From Slow Town to Smart City

Pietro Laureano of Unesco discusses the “Sassi of Matera: the persistence of the prehistoric past for the town of the future," Carlo Alberto Nucci explains the "Smart Grid for Smart Cities" and Giampaolo Campana and Barbara Cimatti elaborate on "A study of slowness in manufacturing: the value of craftsmanship and tradition." Discover what type of progress is expected.
Matera is one of the most representative towns of Italian culture. Situated in the Region of Basilicata, Matera boasts its outstanding, historic town called "I Sassi." Thanks to the initiative of 1986, the Italian Government allocated 100 billion Italian Liras for the restoration of the Sassi to carry out slum clearance and urbanization programs and encourage the inhabitants to populate the Sassi once again. The Sassi represent the persistence of a prehistoric past that can be still admired in the cavernous and underground mazes underlying the built up structures.

Cittaslow is a movement founded in Italy in October 1999. Cittaslow's goals include improving the quality of life in towns by slowing down its overall pace, especially in a city's use of spaces and the flow of life and traffic through them. The concept of the smart city as the next stage in the process of urbanisation has been quite fashionable in the policy arena in recent years, with the aim of drawing a distinction from the terms digital city or intelligent city.

In collaboration with: Laboratory for Research on the City (Istituto di Studi Superiori), University of Bologna.