Smart city: Effects on urban mobility and expected developments due to autonomous vehicles

In last decades cities were subjected to an important increase of inhabitants, then significant changes occurred on communities livability related to several aspects as urban mobility and information management. In order to handle the rising demand recent technological innovations as IoT (Internet of Things) or ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) resulted to have a key role for an efficient and safe management. Then such process that makes cities able to ensure a high quality data management for citizens and equipped with technological devices lead to a concept named “Smart City”. The latter has various definitions that changed in relation to specific studies that were carried out by researchers, however between various actors that characterizes a smart city a key role is represented by AVs (Autonomous Vehicles) that in recent years had a significant spread on market. AVs operation in addition with a smart city environment allows to achieves high quality standards in terms of urban mobility related to service quality and safety. It is possible to state that AVs operation and smart city environment are complementary, because AVs cannot obtain high performance levels without a context equipped with appropriate technological devices and smart cities have to guarantee an efficient and safe mobility to be considerate as such. In this paper it will be carried out an analysis of smart cities main characteristics and developments, taking into account mainly the relation with AVs spread and the benefits that the latter are able provide.