Transformations  in
Business & Economics

THE RACE FOR MAKING UP THE LIST OF EMERGENT SMART CITIES. AN EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRY'S APPROACH
Mircea Georgescu, Vasile-Daniel Pavaloaia, Daniela Popescul, Alexandru Tugui

ABSTRACT. In the digital economy, Smart City represents one of the medium and long-term multi-dimensional objectives of each city on its road to modernity. This trend becomes even more obvious in the case of cities from countries with emerging economies. The aim of this paper is to compile a literature review in accordance with the Smart City concept and the models tackled for the smartness-type analysis. It is followed by the improvement and concrete application of the European model proposed by the team coordinated by Giffinger in 2007 for the Romanian cities, as an emerging economy country in East Europe. In order to attain this goal, the authors developed an exploratory research method based on direct observation accompanied by the synthetic and critical analysis of several selected Romanian cities that fulfil the minimum criteria of smart cities in compliance with the European methodology. The results of this study reveal that from the 41 cities, only 6 fulfilled the minimum criteria .

KEYWORDS: smart cities, smart cities framework, smart community, digital economy.

JEL classification: O18, R58, H43, H54, H83, I28, M19.