Smart city: A critical assessment of the concept and its implementation in Romanian urban strategies

Abstract

The last decades pressured the cities all over the world to become smarter and to develop smart initiatives in order to keep up with the global trends. Nevertheless, the pace to reach this objective vary considerable from one country to another. For the urban areas from the post-communist block the race to smartness started late and run into a series of obstacles related to financing, understanding, and stakeholders’ involvement. Our paper assesses the insertion, evolution, and implementation of smart city concept in such a territory (Romanian cities), while simultaneously addressing the issue of transparency of smart projects. The study found an increasing openness of authorities to integrate smart components within the city profile with a focus on smart mobility domain, mostly connected with smart apps and online platforms. However, little information is available regarding the smart projects, with discrepancies between the statistics and the available information, suggesting the need for clarifications and harmonized statistics in order to articulate more effective evidence-based policies.