Trends in the Application of the Concept of Smart Cities in the Western Balkan Countries

The concept of creating smart infrastructure, as well as the use of available resources and potentials leads to the idea of creating smart cities. The development of this concept implies the implementation of development trends related to life in the cities of the Western Balkans, but also the development of unique solutions that will assimilate development trends and enable their availability and use by citizens living in the city, which is the basic hypothesis of this research. The subject of this paper includes data collection through a survey of employees in various city administrations in Belgrade, Nis, Kragujevac, Trebinje, Podgorica, Herceg Novi, Skopje, analysis of collected data, and making unique conclusions and solutions to the survey. The aim of this paper is to point out the importance and significance of the concept of smart cities on the basis of relevant literature and available indicators obtained by the research, and to determine the extent to which it is implemented in urban administrations in the Western Balkans. The results of the research indicate that despite the cities in which significant progress is noticeable in the implementation of strategic solutions of smart cities, there are still noticeable problems in their implementation in the Western Balkans.