Urban development towards smart city – a case study
Urban development towards smart city – a case study

Summary/Abstract: This paper contains an analysis concentrated on 7 poles from Romania: Brașov,Cluj-Napoca, Constanța, Craiova, Iași, Ploiești and Timișoara which are declared growthpoles in which priority investments are made from domestic and European funding. Weanalysed information presented in official documents, including strategies, integratedurban development plans (IUDP) for the programming period 2007-2013, projectpresentations and other documents. We set to focus our analysis on endeavours of the localpublic authorities to apply the human and digital intelligence in planning development ofthe respective cities. The research interest focused on identifying whether becoming smartcity is part of strategic planning, either as strategic objective or as specific project as partof another objective meant to contribute to overall urban development. The analysis on theavailability of local authorities from Romanian growth poles to take up in their planningendeavours aspects related to human and digital intelligence that Romanian growth polesdo not seem to explicitly envision themselves as smart cities, with no explicit referencebeing made to ”smart city” in their visions. One could nevertheless notice that thedimension related to human intelligence is present in the visions, with some growth poles -Timișoara and Cluj-Napoca - making reference also to technological intelligence that is tobe taken into account for economic development of the respective growth poles. These twogrowth poles are the two most advanced economically of the seven growth poles. Of thesesseven, we argued that Brasov stands out as the one that showed more awareness andinterest in becoming a smart city, as its IUDP included a policy towards development ofinformation society, reflected in two programs and several projects that converged towardsdevelopment of integrated data management systems in the local authority, in order toimprove access to public information and to management of several public servicesprovided by the local authorities. Thus, it is more advanced in its endeavours towardsbecoming a smart city, as their coherent actions that followed the initial planning proved.The other growth poles took into account specific interventions, through projects, whichinvolved mostly technological intelligence.

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