Emerging smart city, transport and energy trends in urban settings: Results of a pan-European foresight exercise with 120 experts

Forecasting future trends constitutes a key process for supporting urban and territorial policy making in general. In this work, we explore how the domains of smart cities, smart transport, and smart energy will evolve until 2030 from a scientific and technological perspective, as a means to inform future policies for urban development in Europe. We started our work with an extensive review of recent and relevant research, covering policy and market reports, scientific journal articles, and other scientific publications. Then, a two-round Delphi survey with 120 field experts was conducted to assess the plausibility of the literature review findings to materialize until 2030. According to our empirical findings, there will be several speedy and structural changes in the three domains: we were able to identify a set of 18 statements that are highly probable to become reality in the next decade, whereas 17 statements were classified as plausible but not highly probable, and three statements raised controversiality. This work provides significant added value in supporting territorial policymakers' and stakeholders' decision making under uncertainty, as well as in designing highly relevant research agendas, attuned to contemporary and emerging trends.ISSN:0040-162