Europe is characterised by a more polycentric and less concentrated spatial pattern of urban settlements compared to, for instance, the USA or China. There are 23 cities of more than 1 million inhabitants and 345 cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants in the European Union, representing around 143 million people. Only 7% of the EU population live in cities of over 5 million inhabitants. In addition, 56% of the European urban population (around 38% of the total European population) live in small and medium-sized cities and towns of between 5,000 and 100,000 inhabitants.
Due to the economic and technological changes, caused by the globalization and the integration process, European Cities are struggling to cope with competitiveness challenges integration process, European Cities are struggling to cope with competitiveness challenges, combined at the same time with environmental and social objectives in order to end up with the creation of sustainable urban environments representing, during the last decades, an ultimate goal of Europe as a whole.
At the European scale, although the vast majority of the urban population lives in small and medium-sized cities, the main focus of smart city applications for sustainable urban development tends to be currently focusing on the large scale metropolises.
As a result, support of small and medium-sized cities by smart city solutions for coping with sustainability challenges and contributing to EU overall climate change objectives, which can be rather different in nature compared to those faced by large metropolitan areas, remains
to a certain degree rather unexploited.
Economies of scale, normally associated with larger cities and urban areas, could be demonstrated through innovative approaches to collaboration amongst small and medium-sized cities.
Small cities and islands have the ability to develop and test cost-effective solutions that can be very easily scaled up or down to meet the needs of a variety of small and medium-sized cities, in order to cope with city-specific challenges.
In this respect, replicability perspectives can be enhanced thus supporting faster and cost-efficient roll-out of these solutions. This is a promising, easier and more resource-efficient way compared with small to medium-sized cities attempting to break down large-scale best practices from larger cities.
Contribution of small and medium-sized cities to overall sustainability objectives can be rather crucial for reaching European commitments at the global scale.
