A SYNOPSIS OF ROMANIA’S SMART CITIES INNITIATIVES

The term smart city is often associated with the desire for accelerated modernization of space and urban social interactions, especially based on Information and Communications Technologies. Smart cities are creative and sustainable areas that bring improvements on the quality of life, a friendlier environment and where the prospects of/for economic development are stronger. Such cities are to be considered as the sum of the various improvements in urban infrastructure, the quality of services provided to citizens, the operational costs of public administration. Romania has several key cities that have begun their pivot from regular and only digitized cities, to smart cities. According to information from the Romanian Smart City Association (ARSC), in 2018, at Romanian national level, 24 cities could be considered smart, the following cities being most visible in terms of how many projects have been undertaken so as to develop a smart city: Alba Iulia city has 60 such projects, Cluj-Napoca city has 10, Arad has 9, Sibiu and Oradea each have 8 projects, and Bucharest has started six such projects. At 2020 level, we notice an increase in the number of projects in the following way: Alba-Iulia now has 106 projects, Cluj-Napoca has 54 projects, Timisoara 26, Arad and Iasi have each 19 projects, Brasov and Bucuresti (Sector 4) have 18 projects each, Oradea 17, Sibiu 15, and Piatra Neamț 15 projects. The main areas of interest being Smart Mobility, Smart Governance, Smart Living, Smart Economy, Smart Environment, and Smart People. Having set goals of cutting energy costs by 30% in the field of public transportation and an increase of 45% in terms of innovation products that are to be sourced locally, the city of Oradea has attracted project worth 369 million euros, and this entire sum has been achieved through EU funded grants