Smart sustainable cities are the vision and future epicentres for human activities, initiatives, and projects for addressing the grand societal challenges. But lack of awareness and collaboration between different stakeholder groups is a major obstacle undermining sustainable development and cooperation.  Smart specialisation approach offers the quadruple helix as a base for more open collaboration.

The working group outlined the key questions for the roadmap of building a smart city:

What is a smart city? What are the indicators for measuring “smartness” and progress? How can a smart sustainable city ensure well-being of its inhabitants?

The results of the working group focus on developing several key elements of the smart cities:

• platforms for citizen participation;
• innovation units for rapid experimenting;
• communication strategy to overcome the divide between the stakeholders.