The diploma thesis is focused on the Smart Cities concept in the Czech Republic. The aim of the thesis is to get an overview of foreigner and Czech cities that are successful in implementing the Smart Cities concept. The main aim of the thesis is to evaluate the possibility of applying Smart Cities principles in a city České Budějovice. The thesis is based on a study of scientific literature, strategic or conceptual documents and the examples of "best practice". The draft of Smart City concept České Budějovice results from the questionnaire survey and the conducted interviews.

La question de la forme urbaine s'est affirmée depuis une dizaine d'années comme une priorité des réflexions sur le devenir des villes européennes. Soulevée en réaction au processus d'étalement urbain, cette question est de plus portée par l'émergence de la notion de développement urbain durable et par les débats qu'elle anime quant aux bien-fondés d'un modèle de ville compacte et dense. Ces discussions ne sont cependant que rarement étayées par des mesures comparables car les bases de données sur les villes européennes sont toujours en cours de constitution. <br /><br />La cartographie des espaces bâtis restituée par l'image CORINE Land cover vers 1990 est une source inédite qui, croisée avec les données de population, nous a permis d'établir un ensemble de repères pour comparer les formes des villes considérées à l'échelle de la tache urbaine. Malgré la complexité des processus en jeu et par-delà la spécificité des situations locales, nous avons ainsi interrogé le rôle de logiques générales relatives à la taille des villes, à leur appartenance nationale ou à différents contextes de peuplement régionaux, pour rendre compte de la diversité des formes observées en Europe occidentale.<br /><br />Dans le cadre des agglomérations, deux dimensions de la compacité, l'une relative à l'emprise physique des villes (étendue et densité), l'autre à leur configuration spatiale (forme des taches urbaines), ont été croisées pour vérifier et nuancer l'importance d'un gradient nord-sud de la compacité urbaine en Europe. Dans le cadre élargi d'aires urbanisées, le modèle du champ urbain ressort encore comme un principe fort d'organisation des espaces bâtis, selon un double gradient linéaire, très contrasté dans les limites de l'agglomération, plus diffus dans les espaces périurbains. Pour quelques grandes régions urbaines, l'application de méthodes de lissage a permis, en généralisant l'image des surfaces bâties à plusieurs échelles, de restituer différentes structures hiérarchiques du peuplement, plutôt monocentriques ou polycentriques. Ces premières explorations ont établi des résultats qui seront confrontés à la prochaine version de CORINE, disponible en 2004.

This dissertation analyses the consequences of seemingly placeless processes like the European integration and the increasing economic globalisation on Brussels and the people living there. The study shows that Brussels has become one of our time's most important international political capitals and a leading business node in Europe. European institutions, international organisations, headquarters and subsidiaries of transnational corporations are increasingly locating themselves in Brussels. Simultaneously there has been an influx of transnational professionals working in the international sector. This research shows that with the internationalisation of Brussels there has been concomitant economic restructuring with the emergence of an advanced service economy. The labour market has become polarised between those who have jobs and those who do not. Brussels has also experienced a spatial and socio-economic polarisation along ethnic lines. The thesis explores the connections between these changes and Brussels' international role. Drawing on the world / global city thesis of Saskia Sassen and John Friedmann, a theoretical framework is developed to analyse this. One of the important results of this study is that the world / global city thesis needs to be complemented with a thorough analysis of the place: the political and historical context, and also the role of the local agents, to enable an explanation of the observed development. The interplay between global and local processes needs to be clarified. It is also argued that to properly understand cities with an international role like Brussels, we need to know why international agents locate there. Michael Storper's concepts of 'economic reflexivity' and 'territorial specificities' are used to analyse the rise of Brussels into a reflexive world city - a city vibrating with specific knowledge, produced through inter alia social interaction and critical reflection, that some transnational agents find extremely vital to tap into.

National innovative capacity, a central driver of countries’ long-term economic growth, has been one of the focal points in innovation research for roughly thirty years. Initially proposed as an index to measure technologic invention over time, this concept has become the widely accepted standard for measuring the performance of (sub) national and sectoral innovation systems toward being an analytic tool attributed to innovation systems theory. Country comparison, knowledge flows, and R&D forecasting are in the center of analysis feeding the concrete practical use of innovation policy optimization. In this regard, a rich body of studies has contributed indispensable knowledge about the determinants of innovative capacity. However, the multi-dimensional interconnections have not been covered in depth. Thus, to gain a holistic understanding of the “DNA” behind national innovative capacity a new “comparative” view of these determinants is necessary. To this end, this dissertation proposes revisiting the focus, unit and parameters of analysis that predominate within current national innovative capacity studies and sets forth three interlinked academic articles that focus on different layers of innovative capacity in countries. Besides furthering academic discourse on the determinants of innovational outcome, this conceptual revision leads to a new approach on national innovation capacity research. Its intention is to make policy makers aware of certain pathways leading to the same outcome. This knowledge will enable them to pursue a dynamic approach of supporting the innovative processes in countries by defining appropriate innovation strategies that consider both the countries’ specific preconditions and the sub-systems perspective.:1. Introduction 2. The purpose of revisiting the NIC concept for innovation policy 3. The scientific contribution of this doctoral thesis 3.1 Article 1: Increasing the national innovative capacity: Identifying the pathways to success using a comparative method 3.2 Article 2: National Health Innovation Systems: Clustering the OECD countries by innovative output in healthcare using a multi-indicator approach 3.3 Article 3: Increasing the innovative capacity of European cities: Making use of proven concepts from the national level 4. References