Redefining Urban Players

The rise of the smart city expression in the early 2010s had a dramatic impact on the representation of the city as a global market, which resulted into the sudden apparition in the urban fabric of players coming from the ICT industry, like IBM, competing with historical private players, like Engie, to equip cities with infrastructures and solutions.

A lot of attention has been given to the tormented story of these newcomers but almost no research efforts have been done to explore how historical players have transformed their traditional businesses to conciliate this digital impetus with their existing capabilities and cities’ new needs for a more sustainable and more inclusive urban development.

Taking advantage of the relationship IGLUS developed with Engie since 2018, this Quarterly aims at presenting some aspects of Engie research streams and positions in the urban fabric to fix this academic asymmetry. It also opens a perspective on how private players translate and interpret urban challenges.

If you feel that there are innovative practices underway in your city/ region and you would like to contribute to an upcoming edition of IGLUS Quarterly, we encourage you to contact umut.tuncer@iglus.org.

Read the full issue here.