Contents

#### **Preface XI**


#### Chapter 7 **Influence of the Motor Transport on Sustainable Development of Smart Cities 111** Irina Makarova, Ksenia Shubenkova, Vadim Mavrin and Eduard Mukhametdinov

Preface

Aristotle defined the city as follows: ''A city must be built to provide its inhabitants with securi‐ ty and happiness." Friederich Ratzel defined it as "a sustainable density of human dwellings and people who occupy considerable space and are at the crossroads of a major communica‐ tions road." Cities are essential to humans. For those who live, work, or visit them, as well as for those who rely on growth, the cities generate for both the city and the country. The emer‐ gence of cities on the stage of history was a fiery consequence of the evolution of human civili‐ zation. Originally, the city was created to fulfill a commercial product exchange role and a military (security) role. The first urban civilizations in the world emerged in Asia near ad‐ vanced agriculture systems based on irrigation. The oldest city in the world, Jericho, appeared 7000 years ago in the Jordanian territory. Between the fifth and second millennia BC, flourish‐ ing cities developed in Mesopotamia (Ur, Uruk, Babylon), the Mohenjo-Daro Valley, northern China, and Phoenicia (Tyr, Sidon). Starting with the third millennium BC, cities began develop‐ ing in northern Africa in the Nile Valley (Memphis) and the Mediterranean Sea (Carthage). In Europe, the Minoan civilization created the first urban centers in the second millennium BC (Knossos on the island of Crete). Subsequently, in ancient Greece, there are city-states (Micene, Corinth, Athens). The ancient Greeks also set up numerous colonies in Asia Minor (Ephesus, Miletus) and on the Black Sea coast (Histria, Tomis, Callatis). In the Roman era, cities saw defi‐ nite progress with paved streets, sewerage and water supplies, public utilities, and central fo‐ rum markets. Interestingly, many European cities were built on the ruins of the Roman ones (London, Paris, Vienna, Turin). In the Middle Ages, many cities fell. They were fortified with defense walls and ditches. As a consequence, the city is a well-populated regional body with a high degree of concentration, organization, and social, cultural production, formed under cer‐ tain conditions of space and time. The city can be defined as a spatial, economic, and social formation that cooperates with a multitude of factors with which it is in close interdependence and reciprocity; a body that employs large spaces and has a unique role in polarization or eco‐ nomic gravity factors through production and consumption. We are used to sector-oriented thinking. It is the traditional approach for many local and national initiatives, but in the future, we need to associate traditionally divided sectors. With increased pressure on cities and still fewer resources available, it is imperative that the urban policy of the future be developed in an ever-closer interaction between areas such as transport, business, social, integration, environ‐ ment, and cultural theory. Cities need to help ensure and improve the quality of life of their inhabitants and business attractiveness by providing sophisticated information and communi‐ cation technologies in the fields of education, employment, social services, health, and safety. Our cities must be able to adapt to the threat posed by climate change. Properly designed and properly planned urban development can improve the quality of the environment and reduce carbon emissions. Cities need to achieve these results through innovative preventive, mitiga‐ tion, and adaptation measures that contribute to the development of new industries, and activi‐

ties that generate a low level of carbon dioxide emissions.

It is difficult to determine precisely the date of birth of the sustainability concept in concern to cities. Sustainability in the urban domain appears, at minimum apparently, to have emerged out of the two unified oil crises in the late 1960s and early 1970s: the first of these crises was ecologi‐

