Creative Rings for Smart Cities

In order to make an impact on citizens’ lives, projects within the framework of Smart Cities shall address - along with safety and transportation issues – shared services based on novel as well as creative applications that exploit Future Internet platforms and relevant network infrastructures. It is individual creativity, skills and talents, which lie at the crossroads between arts, business and technology, that provide a strong competitive advantage in novel applications aiming at the production and the commercialization of creative content. The vision of the SPECIFI project for European Creative Rings is presented in this paper. Creative communities are in most cases isolated from their counterparts in other cities having no access to Future Internet technologies and solutions. SPECIFI proposes the use of Creative Rings as a means of sharing creative and innovative content and enabling internet activities all over Europe. Thus Creative Rings intend to bring together infrastructure solutions that facilitate the use of future internet systems and applications. Creative Industries may experiment and deploy these systems and take advantage of the distribution of innovative content. Creative Rings are presented herein in terms of scenarios, infrastructures and applications.