SMART GREEN EVENHANDED METROPOLIS ACTIONS AGAINST URBAN PLANNING IN EUROPEAN UNION

ABSTRACT

Today development is related to globalization and transition to digital economy as well as to growing pressures on the environment and the society. As the proportion of the urban population is rapidly increasing, cities are becoming more and more the focus of these changes this paper. Most cities in the European Union (EU) are increasingly promoting smart green just actions, trying to learn from the experience of more advanced cities in this field. These actions obviously affect urban strategies and urban planning implementation. However, the rapid that these solutions alone will lead to a sustainable city future and urban planning will drastically shrink. Thus, there are some fundamental questions here: have the implemented smart green just interventions adequately addressed the urban planning objectives? How can this degree of correspondence be evaluated? In this context, the paper starts from: (a) A critical presentation of the concepts of smart, green, and just cities and the complementarities and interconnections among them (b) The green just urban actions (c) A discussion of the role of digitalisation, mainly driven by private investments, to the urban actions. On the basis of these three points, we discuss the interaction of the above specific actions with urban planning; then, we further specify this discussion in this research. The paper highlights the necessity to enhance synergies between the implementation of smart green just urban actions in the EU and urban planning; to this end appropriate adaptations of both the actions and urban planning are necessary; priority should be given to further supporting the existing tools and procedures ensuring synergies as well as promoting new ones.