3S City (Smart, Safe, Sustainable)

INPUT 2025 Scientific Committee

Among the many contemporary approaches to urban studies and urban/regional planning, certain key concepts have emerged as highly recurrent both in scientific literature and in urban practice. Topics such as smartness, safety and health, and sustainability have traditionally been addressed separately, despite their evident interconnections in terms of methodological approaches and potential outcomes for urban analysis, forecasting, and management.
Of these, sustainability is the most established notion, often regarded as a prerequisite for every urban and regional action or strategy. Sustainability informs both large-scale global programs and smaller-scale interventions, from building-level projects to daily individual practices. Nevertheless, cities continue to face significant environmental, social, and economic challenges, as illustrated in numerous reports (such as those from the IPCC). To address these, cities and regions should work toward a balanced approach that harmonizes the various dimensions of sustainability while integrating them with smart technologies and behaviors (both at the city and citizens level) and the evolving concept of urban safety, which has expanded from risk management to encompass health, resilience, and well-being.
The challenge ahead lies in defining the limits, boundaries, and opportunities for combining these three critical concepts into a cohesive framework, which we can refer to as the “3S City”, built upon the older “3R” approach (reduce, reuse, recycle), closely aligned to sustainability goals.

In this session, the Authors are invited to explore the following questions:

• What knowledge base is needed to conceptualize the 3S city?
• Which specific methodologies and tools should be developed?
• Can the “3S City” serve as a prototype for “multiple goals management”, which is central to addressing complex urban actions?
• How can Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Extended Reality (XR) enhance the Implementation of the “3S City” model?

Contributions should draw upon both theoretical perspectives and practical experiences to propose future scenarios and contribute to the ongoing development of urban strategies and decision-making processes that effectively integrate sustainability, smartness, and safety principles.

Keywords: sustainability, Healthy City, safety, urban exposure