Smart urban development as a framework for regenerative economy

The destructive and reckless behavior of human beings, corporations, institutions, and governments, driven by an unwavering commitment to economic growth at any cost has severely undermined the planet's finely balanced life-support mechanisms, to the extent that the abundance of resources, opportunities, and choices can no longer be taken for granted. In the era of the hegemony of data, innovation, and science, the rhetoric of the smart city has emerged as a logical trajectory for the urban development of the future. The regenerative economy, by contrast, is recognized as an urgently needed model of economic development with significant potential to foster partnerships between natural and socio-ecological systems, thereby promoting universal well-being and embedding these relationships within established governance and institutional frameworks. Since transformative patterns should be multifaceted, complementary, and synergistic rather than rival or exclusionary, the objective of this paper is to establish a conceptual linkage between the regenerative economy and the smart city, and to identify the specificities and implications of their interrelationship.