Current issue

Banks in smart cities. A bibliometric and thematic review

Zbigniew Korzeb, Danuta Szpilko, Filippo di Pietro

This article aims to systematize scientific research on the role of banks in the context of the smart city concept. A bibliometric study of papers obtained from the Scopus and Web of Science databases between 2011 and 2025. Following the application of restricting criteria throughout the search procedure, 110 records were retrieved from Web of Science and 312 from the Scopus database. This study highlights the possible gaps found and provides an appraisal of the current state and future…

DOI (& full text): doi.org/10.15240/tul/001/2026-5-003

Section: Sustainable cities

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Analyzing user perceptions and adoption of urban public transport applications through natural language processing

Juan Antonio Aguilar-Moreno, Pedro R. Palos-Sanchez, Rafael Pozo-Barajas, Teresa Duarte-Atoche

An enhanced understanding of urban public transport app adoption has been achieved by applying innovative data mining and sentiment analysis techniques to large user review datasets from Google Play Store and Apple App Store, covering major European metropolitan areas. Natural language processing (NLP) methods were employed to perform sentiment analysis, emotion analysis, and topic modeling (LDA), extracting valuable insights from unstructured text. The results highlight the importance of…

DOI (& full text): doi.org/10.15240/tul/001/2026-5-004

Section: Sustainable cities

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Reimagining campus mobility through the lens of the 15-Minute City

Daniela Surmikova, Peter Dzupka

The 15-Minute City concept envisions urban environments where residents can access essential services within a short walking or cycling distance. Although education is recognized as one of the core functions within this framework, the specific role of universities in promoting proximity-based urban models remains largely unexplored. This study addresses this gap by examining how universities, as significant generators of mobility, can contribute to the realization of the 15-Minute City…

DOI (& full text): doi.org/10.15240/tul/001/2026-5-006

Section: Sustainable cities

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A six-dimensional review of the EU’s smart city agenda in practice

Patrik Volosin, Tomas Koren, Matus Kubak

European Smart City policy has become a flagship of EU innovation, yet systematic evidence on how these ambitions translate into real urban projects remains scarce. Using project metadata from the European Commission’s CORDIS (Community Research and Development Information Service) repository extracted in 2025, we harmonize completed projects across FP7 (2007–2013), Horizon 2020 (2014–2020) and Horizon Europe (2021–2027) to identify 725 Smart City projects with explicit city-level targeting.…

DOI (& full text): doi.org/10.15240/tul/001/2026-3-002

Section: Sustainable cities

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Smart cities in Czech regional development strategies: Key challenges and barriers

Patrik Urbanik, Josef Horalek, Tereza Otcenaskova

The article examines the extent to which the Smart City (SC) concept is integrated into regional development strategies in Czechia, responding to the growing importance of smart approaches and the persistent inconsistencies in their strategic application across regions. The aim of the study is to evaluate how Czech regions incorporate SC principles into their strategic documents and to identify the main barriers that hinder their effective implementation, ultimately offering recommendations for…

DOI (& full text): doi.org/10.15240/tul/001/2026-3-003

Section: Sustainable cities

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Application of self-organising maps to analysed bike-sharing usage in large cities: A case study of Seville

Luis Perez-Pulido, Angel Mena-Nieto, Jose Carlos Vides

This study provides a quantitative analysis of the relationship between Seville’s public bicycle-sharing system usage and the city’s environmental conditions, employing an unsupervised artificial intelligence method. The dataset spans from 2018 to 2023 and combines operational service data (daily rentals, turnover) with weather data (temperature, precipitation, humidity), including the heat index as a measure of thermal comfort. The method is based on self-organising maps (SOM), implemented…

DOI (& full text): doi.org/10.15240/tul/001/2026-3-005

Section: Sustainable cities

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Are sustainable cities attractive to digital nomads? A machine learning approach

Pedro R. Palos-Sanchez, Yendry Lezcano-Calderon, Jose A. Folgado‑Fernandez, Pilar Giraldez-Puig

This study explores the determinants of urban sustainability for digital nomads by predicting the nomad_score, a composite indicator of city attractiveness for remote workers, using supervised machine learning. Data were collected from NomadList and open city datasets, covering 668 destinations and 27 quantitative variables related to cost of living, connectivity, safety, social inclusion, and lifestyle. Gradient boosting, random forest, neural network, decision tree, AdaBoost, linear…

DOI (& full text): doi.org/10.15240/tul/001/2026-3-007

Section: Sustainable cities

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Fostering regional competitiveness through European joint study programmes: Insights from European university alliances

Timea Stefanikova, Viliam Fedak

European university alliances are evolving into instruments of internationalisation, as well as vehicles for reducing regional disparities and strengthening innovation capacity across Europe. The present study examines the manner in which joint study programmes developer within European university alliances contribute to both the academic integration of higher education institutions (HEIs) and the innovation performance of the regions in which they operate. Utilising a comprehensive set of data…

DOI (& full text): doi.org/10.15240/tul/001/2026-3-008

Section: Sustainable cities

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Urban vulnerability to extreme heat: An assessment of Slovak cities

Veronika Toth, Miriam Sebova, Timea Saboslajova

Although cities are now home to more than half of the world’s population, these concentrations of people, assets, and economic activities are subject to increasing risks as the consequences of climate change begin to take effect. As a result, the concept of urban vulnerability has gained renewed prominence in academic discourse and policy discussion, as it is a crucial means of understanding and addressing the impacts of climate change on cities. Within this context, the paper focuses on urban…

DOI (& full text): doi.org/10.15240/tul/001/2026-3-009

Section: Sustainable cities

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Unlocking the aware citizen: How digital literacy moderates the translation of political awareness into participation

Gavaa Zanabazar, Qaiser Mohi Ud Din, Tao Hong

Political awareness is widely recognized as a foundation for democratic participation, yet the mechanisms through which awareness translates into action remain underspecified, particularly in digitally mediated environments. While prior research has examined political awareness, civic engagement, and digital literacy separately, few studies have tested how these factors interact to shape participation. It has largely overlooked how digital competencies condition the behavioral pathway from…

DOI (& full text): doi.org/10.15240/tul/001/2026-3-010

Section: Sustainable cities

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