Smart Visegrad - How modern and dynamic are the local governments of the V4 regions

The megatrend of building Smart Cities in the context of sustainable development of local governments is highly topical. The movement and intensity of Smart City solutions are proportional to the need to eliminate serious global and regional problems. The most pressing of these relates to socio-economic impact. Therefore, the most attractive areas of interest include infrastructure, environment, management, and governance. The geopolitical context and the vision of a sophisticated, efficient, high-quality, and beneficial municipality leads to the production of economic, social, and environmental benefits also in postcommunist European countries. The effects of synergies of high technology and reflection on the virtuous behaviour of people and society are prerequisites for the desired socioeconomic development and sustainability of countries. Promoting the paradigm of multisubject and multi-sectoral involvement of actors contributes to the performance of regions and enterprises at the same time. The primary impetus for writing the article was the ambition to identify the significant attributes of the Smart City concept and to assess the propensity of V4 countries to address this issue. Within the framework of the study, the analytical methods used were the investigation of the current state of the art, the search of available relevant literature and case studies, the summarisation of results on the basis of induction, deduction, mathematical-statistical calculations and other methods allowing us to draw correct conclusions. The most significant of these conclusions is that there are no significant differences in the propensity of Visegrad Four (V4) countries to be smart. On the contrary, the interest in improving and developing the country, the unit, and the society can be considered a global phenomenon.