Smart City: From the Metaphor of Urban Development to Innovative City Management

The article deals with the evolution of the concept of smart city. Smart city can be examined as the modern metaphor of urban development that is connected with the introduction of information technologies to address a wide range of governance issues. The innovation of the smart city is based on the increased role of human capital, inclusive institutions and cooperation of key participants within innovation ecosystem. The article proposes the use of a three-level model of urban benchmarking, which can contribute to the system self-organization. The future of the smart city projects will depend on ensuring cybersecurity, human and social capital, modern engineering ideas and competent project activities.