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The urban development narrative is shifting from “smart cities,” which prioritize technological optimization through sensors and data, to “wise cities,” a new paradigm that emphasizes sustainable, inclusive, and holistic urban growth. While smart cities focused heavily on infrastructure and digital services to address urban challenges, many projects faltered due to disconnects with local needs, rapid obsolescence, and lack of community engagement. Successful examples like Medellín’s “Medellín Digital” demonstrate technology’s potential when aligned with citizen welfare, but the true evolution lies in leveraging such legacies toward collective well-being rather than mere efficiency.
This shift responds to pressing global challenges: rapid urbanization, climate change, and the need to balance dense populations with environmental sustainability. Wise cities transcend technological fixes by integrating social inclusion, territorial sensitivity, and long-term planning aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. They envision urban spaces as interconnected ecological, social, cultural, and economic ecosystems governed collaboratively by administrations, businesses, and citizens. Key strategies include system-wide energy efficiency through sustainable architecture, renewable integration, modular construction, and fostering human-nature connections, as highlighted by post-pandemic insights.
Ultimately, the transition to wise cities demands rethinking governance and citizen participation to prioritize quality of life, equity, and local identity. Technology becomes a tool for nurturing resilient, adaptable urban ecosystems that honor people and the planet, aiming to create cities that are not only smart but truly wise, capable of addressing 21st-century challenges with empathy and foresight.
A new integrative, humane and sustainable approach that puts people at the centre for a cultural and governance change.
In recent years, the urban narrative has revolved around the idea of smart cities, spaces that promised to optimize each resource through sensors, data and algorithms. However, as he points out Megatrends 2025 of the Bankinter Innovation Foundation, we are witnessing a new paradigm leap: the transition from smart cities to wise cities. In this new concept, technology ceases to be an end in itself and becomes a means at the service of sustainable and inclusive urban development.
Since its inception, the smart city model has been committed to heavy investments in smart infrastructures and services, believing that the mere technological adoption would be enough to solve urban challenges. Experience shows the opposite: projects promoted without a clear link to local needs, affected by the rapid obsolescence of solutions, or conditioned by outsourced calls for funding that impose approaches that are alien to the desired city model, have generated little social and economic return. Many of these developments were never appropriated by the citizens, remaining unfinished or underused after a few years.
That said, the ideal proposed by smart cities is positive and cities such as Medellín, in Colombia, demonstrate the possibilities offered by technology when it is oriented to citizen service. With 2.5 million inhabitants, the “Medellín Digital” project installed 40 photo-detection cameras capable of reading one million license plates daily, 80 display cameras, 22 information panels, sensors at 600 intersections and monitored 6,000 buses. The results were remarkable: a 35% reduction in the accident rate per 10,000 vehicles and 200,000 fewer hours of congestion in 2014 compared to 2010. However, the next step involves using this legacy to draw the roadmap towards a wise city, where the goal is collective well-being and not just traffic efficiency.
From technological enthusiasm to the need for a new urban paradigm
Adding to this lack of strategic orientation is a structural challenge: global urbanization. According to At the United Nations, half of the world’s population already lives in cities, and this proportion is estimated to reach 68% by 2050. Despite occupying only 3% of the earth’s surface, urban areas account for 75% of greenhouse gas emissions. This dichotomy – great demographic and climatic weight in the face of limited land – places the Cities at the crossroads of a historic challenge: how to grow without compromising the well-being of their inhabitants or the balance of the planet?
Concepts such as ‘20-minute cities‘, coined by Bernard Salt, open the door to a balanced suburban model, in which residence, work and leisure coexist less than a quarter of an hour apart, reducing traffic and strengthening the local economy. However, we need to go a step further in the direction of a vision that truly integrates all the elements that make up the life of the cities.
It is in this context that the notion of the ‘wise city’ was born, a concept that transcends technological efficiency to incorporate a holistic perspective of the territory and the people who inhabit it. “A smart city optimises resources through technology, while a wise city goes further: it incorporates territorial sensitivity, social inclusion and a long-term vision”, explains Alfonso Vegara, founder and honorary president of the Metropoli Foundation. “We – the expert clarifies – understand wise cities as ecosystems that learn, connect innovation with local identity and put quality of life at the centre”.
Therefore, wise cities do not simply adopt digital technologies or platforms, but align innovation with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda and the New UN Urban Agenda . It is about conceiving the urban fabric as an integrated set of ecological, social, cultural and economic networks, with governance that promotes collaboration between administrations, companies, social entities and citizens. Only in this way can synergies be generated that enhance truly transformative development.
Technology at the service of life: examples and key strategies
At the heart of this vision is energy efficiency, which in wise cities “implies a systemic approach: urban compactness, sustainable mobility, bioclimatic architecture and smart grids. But collaborative governance and territorial planning must also be considered, as promoted by the Foundation, to adapt solutions to each urban context,” says Vegara, stressing that energy must be managed in a comprehensive way, adapted to the particularities of each neighbourhood and the expectations of its neighbours.
In addition, “integrating renewables into the urban fabric requires holistic planning, incorporating solar roofs, geothermal and energy district networks from the urban design phase. Solar energy, due to its adaptability, is key, but urban wind and local biomass can also play important roles depending on the environment,” stresses the president of Metrópoli. From this perspective, cities are no longer conceived as mere consumers of energy to become active producers, diversifying their sources and reducing dependence on fossil fuels.
In parallel, “alternative methods such as modular construction, the use of recyclable materials and passive technologies reduce the ecological footprint and accelerate execution times. These systems allow for greater urban flexibility and are aligned with our vision of resilient, efficient, and adaptable cities,” says Vegara. The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated certain transformations, revealing the value of nature and well-being.
During the lockdowns, in fact, the so-called “nature deficit disorder” phenomenon emerged, pointing tothe psychological impact of the lack of contact with green spaces. As a result, ‘vegan architecture’ has gained strength, prioritising natural materials such as wood – which absorbs CO₂, is recyclable and, according to the Institut für Holztechnologie in Dresden, which is less likely to harbor bacteria than plastic, as well as quartz, granite, porcelain stoneware or copper.
The transition from smart to wise cities is not without its challenges. “The big challenge is to move from a data-centric approach to one focused on people and territory. The opportunity lies in activating collective intelligence, integrating nature, culture and technology, and planning on a human scale. It is the path to cities that not only work well, but also inspire and care,” concludes Vegara. This call calls for rethinking governance, redesigning citizen participation, and redefining the ultimate goal of the Urban innovation: improving the quality of life without leaving anyone behind.
The move from the smart city to the wise city represents a profound change in mentality . Technology, far from being an end, should serve as a valuable lever to achieve a model where sustainability, equity and local identity coexist in harmony. Only in this way will we build and inhabit cities that are not only intelligent, but truly wise, with their own memory and capable of facing the challenges of the 21st century by putting people and the planet at the centre of every decision.
