This paper investigates how the historical and cultural heritage of cities is and can be underpinned by means of smart city tools, solutions and applications. Smart cities stand for a conceptual technology-and-innovation driven urban development model. By becoming ‘smart’, cities seek to achieve prosperity, effectiveness and competitiveness on multiple socio-economic levels. Although cultural heritage is one of the many issues addressed by existing smart city strategies, and despite the documented bilateral benefits, our research about the positioning of urban cultural heritage within three smart city strategies (Barcelona, Amsterdam, and London) reveals fragmented approaches. Our findings suggest that the objective of cultural heritage promotion is not substantially addressed in the investigated smart city strategies. Nevertheless, we observe that cultural heritage management can be incorporated in several different strategic areas of the smart city, reflecting different lines of thinking and serving an array of goals, depending on the case. We conclude that although potential applications and approaches abound, cultural heritage currently stands for a mostly unexploited asset, presenting multiple integration opportunities within smart city contexts. We prompt for further research into bridging the two disciplines and exploiting a variety of use cases with the purpose of enriching the current knowledge base at the intersection of cultural heritage and smart cities.

Preventive actions of cultural heritage continuously emerge in order to preserve the identity of the respective civilizations, retain its cultural significance and ensure its accessibility to present and future generations. 3D geomatics technologies along with UAV systems are widely used for documenting existing structures especially in difficult-to-access areas. In addition, Building Information Modelling (BIM) for cultural heritage gains ground towards the sustainable management, update and maintenance of the information. To this context, the current work generates a Historic Building Information Modelling (HBIM) model of the “Averof’s Museum of Neohellenic art” located in Metsovo, Greece, by using UAV photogrammetry techniques and additional information derived from the architecture designs of the buildings.

In the past few decades, the management of urban spaces with appropriate tools has been in constant discussion due to the plethora of new technologies that have emerged for participatory planning, drone mapping, photogrammetry and 3D modeling. In a multitude of situations, considerable progress has been made regarding the strategic impact of the successful use of technology for the development of urban spaces. The current era provides us with important digital tools and the opportunity to test new perspectives in the sustainable development of cities. This paper aims to explore the contribution of UAVs to the spatial mapping process of urban space, with the goal of collecting quantifiable and qualitative information to use for 3D modeling that can enable a more comprehensive understanding of the urban environment, thus facilitating urban regeneration processes. Three-dimensional models of high accuracy are not mandatory for this research. The location of the selected research area is particularly interesting due to its boundaries, urban voids and public space that can evolve through public participation. The results can be used for crowdsourcing in participatory decision-making processes and for exploring the consequences that these have on the built environment, and they can be used as a new means of involvement of citizens in local decision-making processes.

Architectural survey is an evolving field in architecture that has been affected during the past decade by the technological advancements in the field of 3D data acquisition. Some of these technological advancements include long-range laser scanning and photogrammetry. Laser scanning gives us an accurate documentation of the site, even in cases where parts of the building have collapsed. This paper aims to present two case studies of digital documentation through laser scanning and photogrammetry that led to the structural reinforcement and preservation of the first site and to a digital reconstruction and a mixed reality platform for the second site. The first site is an Ottoman Soap factory in Lod, Israel and the second one is an Ottoman Bathhouse in Apollonia, Greece. Both sites dealt with challenges during documentation due to a partial collapse of the building or due to dangerous structural conditions. The digital documentation methodologies allowed for a fast, accurate and comprehensive survey, as well as for a good understanding of the building and the areas which were concealed as a result of the collapse. At the same time, the digital documentation model gave the potential for the cultural heritage (CH) site to become part of the social, economic and cultural local community.

In 2017 we published a seminal research study in the International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing & Spatial Information Sciences about how smart city tools, solutions and applications underpinned historical and cultural heritage of cities at that time (Angelidou et al. 2017). We now return to investigate the progress that has been made during the past three years, and specifically whether the weak substantiation of cultural heritage in smart city strategies that we observed in 2017 has been improved. The newest literature suggests that smart cities should capitalize on local strengths and give prominence to local culture and traditions and provides a handful of solutions to this end. However, a more thorough examination of what has been actually implemented reveals a (still) rather immature approach. The smart city cases that were selected for the purposes of this research include Tarragona (Spain), Budapest (Hungary) and Karlsruhe (Germany). For each one we collected information regarding the overarching structure of the initiative, the positioning of cultural heritage and the inclusion of heritage-related smart city applications. We then performed a comparative analysis based on a simplified version of the Digital Strategy Canvas. Our findings suggest that a rich cultural heritage and a broader strategic focus on touristic branding and promotion are key ingredients of smart city development in this domain; this is a commonality of all the investigated cities. Moreover, three different strategy architectures emerge, representing the different interplays among the smart city, cultural heritage and sustainable urban development. We conclude that a new generation of smart city initiatives is emerging, in which cultural heritage is of increasing importance. This generation tends to associate cultural heritage with social and cultural values, liveability and sustainable urban development.