Abstract: the last three decades, the concept of smart city has been gaining popularity, gradually replacing other concepts of urban development. However, there is no unified approach to this concept in the scientific literature, and the development of the concept cannot be considered complete. At the same time, the number of cities claiming to switch to this concept increases every year, which is confirmed by official city strategies and various ratings by various ratings and research. The purpose of this article is to consider various approaches to the interpretation of the concept of smart city, as well as to determine the contexts of using the concept of smart city. The article presents a comprehensive study of existing approaches to the interpretation of the concept of a smart city in the scientific literature for the period from 2000 to 2019. The methodological approach of this study includes a systematic review of the literature on smart cities, with an emphasis on those that focus on conceptual development and provide a base of empirical data. The review shows that the literature reveals three types of driving forces of smart sustainable cities-technologies, communities, public policy, which are associated with such areas of their development as improving the well-being of the population and the quality of life in cities, productivity and efficiency of their functioning and management. However, this experience is not taken into account when developing Russian programs for creating smart cities.
Keywords: smart city, smart city elements, technologies, smart people, sustainable development