Abstract:

In the article, the authors made an attempt to confront the prevailing in the scientific debate view on the shape and functions of the so-called smart urban space, or Smart CITY, with experiences resulting – especially for city residents and management – from the Covid-19 pandemic. After a short introduction, the initial part of the article briefly presents the current shape of the Smart City concept, treated in terms of a paradigm (proposed by Kuhn). Based on such an SC paradigm, the next part of the article presents an outline of the methodology and an attempt to identify areas that fall within the above paradigm, that has been most frequently undertaken in research to date and most often described in available publications. Then, an overview of the problems of an SC – undervalued, according to the authors of the article, in the research carried out so far – is presented. The next part of the article presents the results of extensive surveys of Polish cities on the implementation of the Smart City paradigm. The surveys were conducted in the period immediately preceding the pandemic. After analysing the results of these studies, an attempt was made to determine the level of openness to new challenges in the thinking of city management to new problems and challenges, “absent” in the current paradigm. The final part of the article presents the proprietary list of new needs of a Smart City and its stakeholders, identified as a result of the pandemic experience, as well as the proprietary list of new solutions and a rough analysis of the possibilities of their implementation in the areas of “smart cities”.