The Spread of Smart Cities in Brazil - Focus on Business Model

In the last decades, the increase in demographic density led to the creation of new needs. The population boom has created different necessities aimed at trying to solve some problems that this rise has involved. The issues that should be faced concern different fields, from transportation to healthcare to energy. Therefore, cities have started to revolutionize their infrastructure for solving these problematic aspects and for satisfying the needs of citizens, that have become pretentious as they got in touch with new technologies. This is the context where the concept of “Smart City” comes from. Although a unique definition of Smart City does not exist, it can be defined as a city that takes advantages by using digital solution in order to improve the quality life of inhabitants optimizing services, resources and infrastructures. The problem is that there is still difficulty in identifying which aspects should be observed to classify or not a SC. The concept of SC and of “smartness” are not still clear, as it was seen that several independent and external aspects influence it. Culture, size, economic and technological development and other country specific-factors all influence the taxonomy, leading to potential incorrect results. The aim of this paper is to investigate the methodologies used to identify the features that may define cities smartness through the analysis of a sample of both European and Brazilian cities considered as smart. As results, we should be able to highlight the success factors that cities should implement in their strategies and business model to improve the citizen quality life.