Institutional support of a smart city

The purpose of this study is to determine the conditions of institutional support for the digitization of the urban environment. The paper identifies the main features and analyzes the conditions for the effective functioning of smart cities. The main characteristics of the smart city are revealed: they are people-oriented, use data in a digital format and are based on bottom-up innovations. The paper considers the systematization of the principles and ideas of the theory of institutional modeling from the simplest level of modeling, and ending with the most difficult level consisting in describing the evolution of institutions. The importance of applying such an approach to the study of the institutional support of smart cities is shown. As part of the study of the leading cities in the field of building smart urban environment, priorities, institutions and goals of intelligent development have been highlighted. The paper discusses the problems of the development of smart cities in Russia, presents a number of steps to solve them. The theoretical significance of the study consists in the development of approaches to the institutional support of a smart city. The practical significance of the research lies in the formation of possible future studies of rational economic management in the conditions of digital society. © 2019, Economic Laboratory for Transition Research. All rights reserved.