Mоdel for Analysis and Evaluation of Sustainable Cities in Bulgaria in the Context of Local Public Policy Appliance

Abstract

In recent years, the digitalization of the economy and the increasing demand for resources have created several challenges for developing countries, their regions, and urban agglomerations. Therefore, many governments have undertaken significant changes in the policies applied to developing regions and cities. These new concepts are aimed at gradually building sustainable and smart cities. This is the response of countries to new challenges such as the digital environment, combating climate change, and maintaining favorable living conditions due to the strong environmental and socio-economic degradation. In this regard, the authors set as their main research objective to analyze and assess the sustainability of cities and the surrounding territory by implementing sustainable development policies at all levels. A major task and difficulty for the authors is to build upon and refine a model that can be used to assess sustainable and smart cities. In this paper, the authors propose an approach to studying sustainable cities, thus evaluating the effects of policies implemented in this field. The model includes the main groups of indicators that are used to analyze the sustainable and smart development of municipalities in the Northeast region of Bulgaria. Based on these indicators, data is collected, and processed, and comparative and statistical analysis is carried out to assess their sustainability and intelligence. The authors reach important conclusions such as an unsatisfactory level of sustainable and intelligent development, although the environment and conditions at the national level are favorable. In fact, in Bulgaria, based on the assessment of the studied municipalities in the Northeast region, it is clear that we cannot talk about sustainable cities because Bulgarian municipalities are still at the beginning of this development path.