Among smart governance and smart communities. A survey in the city of Milan

The present article offers a contribution to the debate on smart cities, focusing on the concepts of smart governance, smart communities and the involvement of the city's population. There are two reasons why we decided to investigate these issues. The first reason is of a theoretical and methodological nature i.e. it is useful, for the debate on smart cities and smart communities, to develop a method for field research that may help to comprehend how urban populations are informed about the smart city initiatives in their cities. The second one is of an empirical nature and it concerns the possibility of evaluating how the urban population of Milan was provided information on the smart initiatives in the city. A questionnaire analysing how the urban populations of Milan (Italy) was informed about "projects", "practices" and "initiatives" that are included under the smart city umbrella and strongly triggered by EXPO 2015 was submitted to 1330 respondents. The results of this research highlight the fact that, even if the vast majority of the interviewed population uses the ICT in their daily life, awareness of the "smart" initiatives promoted in the in the city is scarce. The results suggest the need to improve or modify communication strategies adopted so far to communicate with the population of Milan