Sustainable cities in central and eastern European countries. Moving towards smart specialization

During the transition to the market economy the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries were concerned with the creation of the legal and institutional framework for environmental preservation as an important component of sustainable development strategy, in line with the EU accession requirements. Nevertheless, without denying the efforts to create a real environmental culture, the economic and social problems like production decline and growing unemployment made public concern shift away to more immediately stressful issues such as real wages or job insecurity. Later on, in the post-accession period the Cohesion Policy created a more stimulating framework for dealing with the sustainable development objectives. In the current programme period, 2014-2020, in accordance with the “Europe 2020” Strategy, the sustainable growth is closely related to smart and inclusive growth within the strategic objective of the Cohesion Policy, offering each member state multiple instruments and funding opportunities for complying with sustainability criteria. They are particularly supportive for CEE countries, whose internal resources are below the required levels in this respect. This paper proposes a spotlight on the sustainability issues in CEE cities, considered development vehicles for the regions they belong to, and thus major participants in the efforts to promote economic growth and diminish interregional disparities. An evolutionary perspective is applied, aiming to reveal how these cities responded to sustainability requirements in both pre- and post-accession periods. In addition, we test the variance of green performance between different groups of CEE cities (Baltic, Central or East European cities; large, medium and small cities; growing, stagnating and declining cities). In the final part of the paper, a special emphasis is placed on the policies able to create synergies between smart specialization and sustainable development approaches. To this end, the paper investigates how sustainable and smart growth policies complement each other in supporting eco-innovation, eco-system services and resource efficiency at the city level in CEE countries. Meanwhile, the paper looks for those smart policy mixes that rationally combine knowledge-based investments in areas with competitive advantages and coherent support measures for a greener economy, as a pre-requisite for territorial cohesion and competitiveness in Europe.