Digital Twin and Metaverse Supporting Smart Cities: New Perspectives and Potentials

The urban environment is changing. Over the years and with the increasingly important development of new technologies, spaces will increasingly be governed by the Internet, computers and machines. When we speak of ‘new worlds’, we refer more precisely to a new way of understanding and experiencing the world, particularly cities. In this context, the concept of Smart Cities was born, referring precisely to those cities that use technology to improve the quality of life of their citizens, optimise the efficiency of resources and promote sustainable development. The new spaces that will characterise the Smart Cities, however, will not only be physical but a fusion of physical and virtual spaces, also thanks to the emergence and development of the so-called Digital Twin, which enables the transformation from real to virtual. An extension of the combination of the physical and virtual worlds can be traced back to the concept of the Metaverse, understood as a virtual world in which users can interact with each other and with digital objects within an immersive and connected environment. Starting from these concepts, the article aims to design and propose a Metaverse structure, enabled by the Digital Twin, that can overcome all the challenges arising from a complex ecosystem, such as that of Smart Cities, consisting of a significant amount of data.