Smart cities and the sustainability of urban transport: Strategic directions for the metropolitan city of Naples

Abstract

In light of the recent guidelines of the European Commission on the Green Deal, this paper aims to offer a strategic planning strategy for the development of intelligent mobility in Naples, the metropolitan city under investigation. In recent decades, congestion linked to the exponential growth in the number of private vehicles in circulation, together with the inefficiency of the public transport system, have made urgent the adoption of huge investments and initiatives to tackle these problems with participatory governance. The analysis conducted in this paper resulted from a questionnaire to a sample of citizens surveying their mobility habits, with the aim of understanding the reasons and consequences of the inefficiency of the public transport system in the metropolitan city. This study identifies a strategic line to follow to strengthen the intelligent mobility model, which aims above all to decentralise important and valuable functions from the centre to the periphery to decongest the city; one key strategy is the upgrading and revamping of the railway, road and IT infrastructures. The use of modern technologies to improve the quality and efficiency of the system and the adaptation of parking areas to facilitate positive change, on both an urban and a metropolitan scale, as well as improve the most-used metro stations, would represent further effective urgent steps.