THE PUZZLING CONCEPT OF SMART CITY IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE: A LITERATURE REVIEW DESIGNED FOR POLICY DEVELOPMENT.

• Author: Ibanescu, Bogdan-Constantin
• Position: Report

1. Introduction

   During the last two decades, the concept of smart city became a buzzword which captured equally the attention of academics, mass-media, business environment and policy-makers. Its insertion in scientific papers, urban planning documents and popularizing communication has not ceased to increase to the point that different and sometimes confusing interpretations slipped into the general public perception. Nonetheless, besides growing into a popular 'megatrend', the smart city represents a fashionable (technological) concept which brought massive changes in the way policy makers are currently seeing the development of the urban areas.

   Smart is just one of the multitude of concepts meant to designate the relation between the advancements of information and communication technologies (ICT) and economic, political and socio-cultural change, alongside 'intelligent', 'innovative', 'wired', 'digital', or 'creative' (Hollands, 2008; Thompson, 2016). In spite of the apparent diversity, the above-mentioned concepts represent variations of the same idea, the existent variety being a supplementary sign of the heterogeneous vision currently governing the field. Chronologically, 'digital city' was one of the first concepts largely used in literature and political discourse between 1997 and 2009, while since 2010 (and the adoption of Europe 2020 Strategy), 'smart city' became the predominant concept (Dameri and Cocchia, 2013). There are also geographical aspects regarding the use of these terms: 'intelligent city' was mainly used in Northern America and UK, 'digital city' is mostly present in USA, the Western parts of Europe (Ireland, UK), and Asia, while 'smart city', traditionally used in Europe and North America, became lately the most popular concept worldwide (Moir, Moonen and Clark, 2014).

   From the technological-centric approach of Angelidou et al. (2018) to the more social-centric approach of Caragliu, Del Bo and Nijkamp (2011), or Taylor Buck and While (2017), the scientific literature proposes a generous offer of case-studies, researches, analyses, and interpretations. The variety of perspectives and the continuous interest of academia gradually induced a higher acceptance and a broader use of the concept within the political discourse as well. Introducing and supporting 'the use the information and communication technologies to develop their cities competitively in the increasingly complex and inter-connected world' (Paskaleva, 2009, p. 406) become a central topic for policy-makers who found in smart city an appealing framework, full of opportunities. Concisely, the notion of smart city incorporates the idea of an integrative framework making efficient and sustainable use of ICT, social capital, and environmental resources (Kourtit and Nijkamp, 2012). It addresses the long-term sustainability of urban areas, the improvement of quality of life, increased efficiency of urban operations and services, environmental protection, and urban competitiveness (Romao et al., 2018).

   Nonetheless, this academic interest for smart city-orientated strategies is not equally embodied across the globe. A review on papers written on digital and smart cities (Dameri and Rosenthal-Sabroux, 2014) ranked Asia as the continent with the most occurrences of the smart city concept (49% of papers), followed by Europe (36%) and North America (only 9%). More recently, Joss et al. (2019) analyzed 27 sites worldwide, equally divided between Asia, Europe and America, and found that there is a certain homogeneity and communality in the vision regarding the smart city concept. However, significant differences can be observed in the integration of different dimensions of the concept (even between cities from the same continent (Joss et al., 2019). These geographic differences are perceptible also in terms of approaches regarding the implementation of smart city initiatives. American and Asian smart city policies are financed mostly by national governments and private actors (Caragliu and Del Bo, 2020), while in Europe smart cities rely heavily on funding from European Commission's Frameworks Programs (Research & Innovation Schemes) that envision cities as key drivers of resilience and competitiveness (Caragliu, Del Bo and Nijkamp, 2011; European Parliament, 2014; Engelbert, van Zoonen and Hirzalla, 2019).

   Despite the increasingly globalized world, the above-mentioned differences raise the question of spatial differences in the understanding, the implementation, and the interpretation of an overly technological concept. While a smart strategy is highly dependent on the local and regional context (Hollands, 2008), the existent literature identified a series of common actions generally considered as compulsory components of smart city strategies. This could turn out extremely helpful for public and private actors from CEE countries, where the emergence of smart city initiatives is more recent and responds to specific needs of the restructured, post-communist, systems. Local policy-makers from CEE urban areas are looking for smart solutions for their rejuvenating cities, however, the increased diversity of possible actions, doubled by an extreme overcomplication of the approaches, makes the task extremely difficult. Our study aims at providing a thoroughly, policy-orientated, literature review which could help local actors from the new member states of the EU build more solid and adequate smart city strategies.

2. Data and method

   As primary source for this literature review, we explored the journals, books, and proceedings from the most comprehensive and renowned scientific database, Web of Science Core Collection (http://webofknowledge.com). Our scientometric analysis covered a 20 years span between 2000 and 2019, which represents over 99% of all research published on this topic, and took into consideration the number of papers, the research areas of those papers, the countries of affiliation of the authors, and the average number of citations. As search strategy, the title, abstract, and keywords were scanned for smart city related terms. The selected articles and book chapters from Web of Science database were used to analyze the spread and impact of smart city related theme globally, in the European Union, and more specifically in CEE. This data provided the initial assessment of smart city research, its evolution, popularity and even trends. The preliminary assessment allowed us to clearly identify how research on smart city from CEE integrates into the European and even global framework.

   Following this initial evaluation, a more in-depth inquiry was carried out in order to obtain a clearer image regarding the research undertaken in CEE on smart city. This inquiry exceeded the available papers through Web of Science Core Collection database and reached to official documents, reports, dissertations, case studies, business products, or strategies in order to build a more exhaustive image of smart city research in CEE.

   Finally, following a close lecture and grasp of the abovementioned scientific and non-scientific sources, we formulated a series of measures and actions aimed for policy makers, business environment, NGOs, and even citizens from CEE urban areas. Those measures represent either examples of good practices found in literature, either a series of urgent issues identified in various studies which must be addressed.

3. The smart city concept in the European Union, a questionable transition from West to East

   In the European Union, smart cities represent a main pillar of the new administrative and political approach of urban areas (Russo, Rindone and Panuccio, 2014). In 2008, the Covenant of Mayors, an initiative of European Cities, started an extensive dissemination of the concept, leading, two years later, to the introduction of smart city in the targets of Europe 2020 Strategy. The increasing presence of 'smartness' in European cities is not meant just for restructuring and rethinking infrastructure, but also for making cities more innovative and more competitive (Paskaleva, 2009). Meanwhile, the original perspective on smart cities was slightly modified, in order to include in a more integrative approach the energy sector with a focus on economic development, sustainability and inclusion (Dameri and Cocchia, 2013).

   The number of papers on smart city registered an unparalleled growth after 2010 (Figure 1). If in 2000 only 15 papers on this topic were recorded in Web of Science Core Collection, the number reached 73 in 2010 and 3,332 in 2019, a sign of its popularity, as well as importance for the urban decision makers. While its share varies from year to year, the European Union displays a constant interest for smart city and its significance, managing to gather more than a third of the total number of papers.

   In a series of papers by Caragliu and del Bo (Caragliu, Del Bo and Nijkamp, 2011; Caragliu and Del Bo, 2016, 2019, 2020), which to date represents one of the most cited and examined series on smart cities, the authors make a good scanning of the fundamentals and characteristics of smart cities in Europe: the accent seems to be placed on both infrastructure (by integrating traditional and modern technologies) and people (both actors and beneficiaries). Moreover, one of the main ideas regarding smart city approaches in Europe is to go from intelligent/ digital/ smart cities per se, to associating these concepts to human capital, education, creative industries, accessibility, quality of urban transportation networks and, finally to urban wealth (Caragliu, Del Boro and Nijkamp, 2009).

   Overall, the scientific literature analyzing the smart city concept in Europe is focused on several key themes:

   --conceptual debates including smart city and digital city concepts (Hollands, 2008; Dameri and Cocchia, 2013; Thompson, 2016; Ismagilova et al., 2019), including critical assessment of the concept due to its both...