The importance of smart cities and urban policies for the interior of the country

Smart cities are an emerging concept around the world, a smart city is a city that mobilizes and uses resources, namely social, cultural, financial, natural, information and technology, to efficiently improve the quality of life of its inhabitants, workers, students and other visitors. Although the concept of smart city is not consensual, there are some aspects that are common to the various definitions, namely, environment, use of information technologies, knowledge and sustainable urban development. The use of the "smart" concept captures innovative digital transformations driven by new technological capabilities. However, other social factors besides smart technologies are central to smart cities (Smith, 2022). In Portugal we have cities and towns with very different attitudes and degrees of maturity regarding urban intelligence (Neto, 2022). There is no direct correlation between urban intelligence and its geographic location. Urban intelligence does not depend on whether the city is located further to the coast or further inland, it depends on the dynamism, creativity and innovation of each city, in the implementation of good solutions. Urban intelligence is increasingly dependent on the Internet of Things (IoT) and this is the new technological period that will eloquently change the way people, cities and "things" interact (Lopes et al, 2017). Thus, this work aims to identify possible projects that Municipalities can adopt/implement, so that cities become smarter, which will imply a better quality of life for those who visit them and for those who live there, which can contribute to the development of the interior. from the country.