Abstract. The main components of sustainable development – economy, ecology and equity – have a special significance to contemporary cities, given their huge consumption and distribution of goods and services, with an ecological impact exceeding their own location. The sustainability challenge to cities, going hand in hand with the quality of life, makes it necessary to consider a series of social, economic, ecological, cultural, political and institutional measures adapted to both global trends and local characteristics.

Based on these overall considerations this paper aims to investigate the implications of smart solutions for sustainable city development and to gauge the readiness of employees for smart solutions. These solutions concentrate on the core area of the city administration, education, health, transportation, etc. With this purpose in view, the framework for a case study is built up employing a quantitative and qualitative research for a mid-sized Romanian city. Exploratory research techniques combined with applying a survey methodology have been used for studying the preparation of employees for the smart solutions. A set of derived procedures have been employed for collecting and analyzing more than 400 observations from a heterogeneous population. They have been correlated with indicators able to characterize the sustainable city development, so as to point out the impact of the smart solutions and the possibilities to use their facilities in this respect. The results show that smart solutions are highly recommended for the future sustainable development and they are almost ready to penetrate the city from a technological perspective but information and understanding of citizens with regard to this new way of evolution are still lacking.

Keywords: sustainable city; smart solutions; indicators; social impact; readiness of employees.