Editorial: From Smart Systems to Smart Governance

Abstract

The present issue of Smart Cities and Regional Development demonstrates, with unusual clarity, that the contemporary debate on smartness has moved beyond the narrow fascination with devices, platforms, and technical novelty. The articles brought together in Vol. 10 No. 2 (2026) suggest a more mature proposition: a city, an institution, or a public system is not smart merely because it is digital. It becomes smart only when digital transformation is translated into better governance, stronger resilience, broader participation, institutional learning, and public value. Across a remarkably diverse set of contributions – from fragile-state policing to citizen participation, from Digital Twins to travel regulation, from artificial intelligence to education and city branding – the issue consistently returns to one core question: how can innovation be governed so that it strengthens, rather than weakens, the social and institutional fabric?