Implementation of smart city solutions from the perspective of the population in Slovakia

Abstract

In the past decade, the topic of Smart City is indisputably one of the most important concepts in the development of cities and urban regions in Central and Eastern Europe, their management and planning, while innovations and innovation potential are becoming a prerequisite for functioning connections and processes within integrated local (or geographical) functional areas. The Slovak Republic is gradual, despite the difficult beginnings without system coordination, declaring an effort to implement the Smart City policy within the existing residential structure of cities and municipalities. Relying on the Action Plan for Smart Cities and Regions 2023-2025 as well as the Slovakia Program 2021- 2027, at the same time the results of world studies and analyzes carried out in the conditions of the Slovak environment (while we start from the findings and follow up on the study by Kóňa et al. 2022), the authors identify in their research as the main problem the fact that the attention of the state, professional public, as well as local authorities, is aimed at supporting the creation of Functional Urban Areas in the geographical structure of individual regions with the aim of supporting the development of six defined areas, the so-called „domains”, which ultimately brings about an increase in the quality of life of the population of these regions. However, given domains are ambiguous in terms of content, this variability is also reflected in the inability of participating parties to perceive their content. As part of the research, respondents were asked about six areas of smart city policy implementation, the aim of the research was to identify the content perception by the respondents according to the weight they assign to individual areas and subsequently define within individual domains the elements/characteristics perceived by the population as key to the growth of the quality of their lives in cities and regions.