Rafał Kaźmierczak (p), Agnieszka Szczepańska, Monika Myszkowska

Dominik Zielinski

Cities have been playing an increasingly important economic, administrative, cultural and social role, and the growing interest in the smart city concept is primarily related to the rapid growth rate of urbanization. More than half of the Earth's population resides in cities, while interest in settling in an urban unit is growing steadily. Growing urban populations result in increasing challenges connected with safety, healthcare, education, housing, transport, environmental protection and public services. Dynamically developing cities are characterized by chaotic, disorderly, sprawling buildings, traffic paralysis, and environmental degradation, which results in lower living standards for residents and a decrease in the city’s prestige in terms of economics and tourism.
Due to intensifying development processes, modern cities are forced to seek new tools to manage their structure. Considering the rapid transformation of the urban structure, it becomes important to implement appropriate techniques and solutions in the urban planning process. For this reason, the smart city concept, which introduces thoughtful, modern ways of urban management, is necessary in the development of urban areas.
Innovative solutions such as Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Digital Twins can come to the assistance. These technologies, combining the real and virtual worlds, influence the improved management and planning of urban structures, which significantly affects the safety and quality of life of residents. In addition, these solutions create the possibility to analyse projects already at the design stage, which allows errors to be eliminated and corrections made without costly interventions on the real object. For this reason, the technologies in discussion are crucial for cities of the future.

Dominik Zielinski (p), Justyna Chodkowska-Miszczuk, Agata Lewandowska

Rafał Kaźmierczak

The megatrend of sustainable development is influencing an increasing number of cities, including those in post-socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe. This trend is associated with various visions of sustainable city, including concepts like the 15-minute city, smart city, and movements promoting green spaces. To explore the social dimensions of urban transformation, researchers examine the relationship between place and sustainable behavior.

To assess interactions between sustainable city ideas and local urban residents’ beliefs, it is helpful to focus on the identity, that certain urban places encompass. Model of urban identity is constructed with two complementary components: the material layer and the immaterial layer. Therefore the identity of an urban place consists of elements such as the urban grid, architecture, infrastructure as well as values and beliefs expressed within this layer such as empathy and collectivity.

This identity does not emerge in exclusion from the people who inhabit a given area. It results from collaborative efforts between different local actors with varying degrees of involvement in its creation (e.g. local authorities, developers, residents) and it remains interconnected in the relationship between the collective-spatial level and the individual level.

This presentation (1) shows the methodological foundations of how the identity of urban place shapes the attitudes and beliefs of its inhabitants, (2) explores how it might be used in the sustainable behavior creation and (3) aims to define the ideal type of sustainable local identity for Central and Eastern Europe.