Abstract
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The concept of smart city has become increasingly popular, both when addressed in scientific literature as well as from the perspective of contemporary urban policy-making. Namely, this concept has been popularized for the purpose of solving complex urban problems (i.e. environmental sustainability, social cohesion, economic recovery etc.), and is also politically promoted for local electoral purpose. Although this concept does not have single definition and it has rather fuzzy nature, with somewhat blurred line with »alternative« concepts like, e.g. intelligent city, creative city, digital city etc., it has also been popularized in science within the EU in particular, both due to the availability of research funds as well as because it resembles „technological utopia“. Upon the scrutinization of the literature, it can be concluded that there are three main focuses and developmental areas of the concept, that is technologies, human resources and governance. Nonetheless, the literature concentrates around the technological aspects, and there is a lack of literature concentrating in particular on the governance aspects (see, e.g., Nesti, 2018). Subsequently, this review paper proposal focuses on the review of the existing literature on this concept, and the governance-focused literature is mainly considered, where also some critical views on this concept are presented. With this in mind, the similarities and dividing points to the above mentioned »sister« concepts is presented, in order to assess, why label smart might contemporary prevail. Moreover, the paper presents the policy-making evidence on the utilization and proclamation of this concept in European practice, in particular from the CEE perspective. In this context, also practical evidence on smart strategies and processes is given. Namely, often the smartness is taken as a goal of policy-making, but it should be rather considered as a strategy, and practical evidence suggests that this holds. Policy-makers often neglect strategies or their focus is rather narrow, including also problematic implementation (see, e.g., Ben Letaifa, 2015) and omitted participation of relevant stakeholders. This, in contrast, also reflects in narrow thinking of suppliers of what is actually understood under smart city concept (see, e.g., RolandBerger, 2017). Following, paper focuses also on discussion on the limitations in strategizing smart city and preconditions needed for successful implementation of strategies. Paper also synthetizes the findings of existing theoretical and practical literature that addresses the concept of smart cities, but it limits itself to addressing governance aspects.
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