SMART CITIES

The magazine about smart technologies for efficient management of cities and towns

Quarterly published magazine for almost 400 Czech and Slovak cities’ administration officers and decision makers about technologies for efficient management of cities and interoperable solutions. 

The smart cities concept is a strong trend, planned to be supported by EU, that brings significant savings and improvement in city agendas management by use of ICT. Czech cities’ administrations are already tired of reading newsletters, brochures, reports and books produced by European and/or national projects as they are many and present always just a margin of an issue to be solved. The cities need a kind of explanatory guidance giving them information about where to get funding, how to get funding, how to constitute a plan, how to prepare successful public tenders and how to operate the resulting systems regarding their integration and interoperability. These are issues the magazine is tackling. It provides more guidance than just information. 

Content 

The Smart Cities magazine introduces the cities’ representatives with new concepts of city management and development, procedures and tools for presentation and communication with citizens underlining the long term and sustainable planning of investments as well as life space despite the economic drop down period. It is structured in relevant sections to present various solutions of a problem from the point of view of urban planning, new ICT technologies, socioeconomic impacts/tools and environment. It is targeting mainly on potential investors from public sector that are to be provided thorough explanation of successful systems’ solutions from abroad containing their economy impacts, return of investment and right ways of their operation to prepare the ground for near future investments by Central European cities.

As the smart cities concept is quite new in Central and Eastern Europe it needs a more concentrated approach of informing the readers in the way they are used to – printed version is distributed free of charge to concrete representatives of cities above 5 000 inhabitants of the Czech and Slovak republics, the web version for the other users.    

Main Theme

The aim of the main theme section is to analyse the presented problem of the city agenda from different perspectives – urban planning, technology, impact on citizens and the environment, foreign and domestic good practice, brief feasibility studies and socio-economic impacts, British consultant commentary and the conclusion in the form of recommendations for investors. The main theme topic can be represented by an article even before its schedule.

Sections

VISION
Devoted to a significant person for presenting his/her vision for smart cities (e.g. mayor of Prague, vicemayor of Vienna, mayor of Bratislava, Gehl architects).    

SMART
General concepts and planning, good practice from various cities, important information on actual events, evaluation.

MOBILITY
Anything smart concerning mobility, from smart on street parking to smart ticketing.

ARCH

New trends in urban planning, public space architecture, innovative city public space equipment, vacant places solutions

BRAND
Ways of city presentation based on long term strategy planning, what is the target figuration, how citizens/tourist should perceive the city and how to approach this goal

PUNK
New approaches for city organization from the point of its governance (out of mainstream), how to engage citizens and local initiatives with low budget

LIFE
Approaches of the city to energy efficiency and ecological activities/concepts, green mobility and innovative solutions in the areas of energy production/storage/distribution in urban areas, long term monitoring of environment quality, with the goal of improving the quality of life

Target users

Municipality managers and officers of 271 cities and towns in the Czech Republic and 118 in the Slovak Republic, universities, relevant ministries and commercial subjects.

The Advertisement Price List for the Years 2014–2015:

Exclusive placement

PR articles, implementation stories, interviews, studies

Payment conditions

● The Publisher issues the invoice at the day of magazine issuing and the maturity is up to 14 days.

Other information

● The magazine is issued four times a year; the format is 240 x 290 mm.
● The discounts (rack rates) for repeating advertisement are governed according to individual conditions.
● The advertisement prices are stated without VAT.

Technical parametres

● The advertisement is accepted in electronic form in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) only, CMYK, glue binding V2, so count with 5 mm in the inner side as it is a part of the binding.
● In the case of 1/2 page advertisement mind that the background colour should be 5 % to distinguish it from the rest of the doublepage.

Advertisement dimensions (long × high)

PR articles

● The texts should be sent in the formats DOC, DOCX, TXT or RTF. 
● There is an illustrative document PDF at the website www.scmagazine.cz with model situations about the volume of the article.
● The pictures should be provided digitally in the resolution 300 dpi for the target size. If you are not sure about suitability of your picture for offset print, please do not hesitate to contact us. 
● In the case that advertisement needs additional graphical work the data is accepted in the form of separate electronic files.
● After sending the advertisement order to the address: [email protected] you will be provided with detailed instructions for preparation and sending the advertisement materials.

Mediaplan

The main themes and the schedule for 2013-2015 is derived from the actual view on smart cities movement and as such can be modified. There is an expectation of closer British cooperation and many subjects from national levels of Czech and Slovak republics so there could be themes that receive priority. There is a trend that a main theme becomes a stable section in the next issues as it has happened with parking and is expected to be valid also for open/big data.

00–13
Smart parking 

The day of publishing 26th October 2013
Parking is the major problem of Czech and Slovak cities. This issue presents the view on overal concept of parking regulation for various types of users and places as well as the basic systém of smart cities – the smart on street parking system. The issue is the first introductory release of the magazine and illustrates the basic structure of the magazine for the future.

01–14
Public data digitalization, open and big data 

The day of publishing 14th January 2014
Data is becoming a precious commodity, new currency and value comparable to gold. Making data available could bring significant savings, give a birth to new services and improve the efficiency of the existing agenda of the cities. The main theme is devoted to benefits of data digitalization, openness (availability) for smart city concepts and also big data (high volume of data fusion) to create highly sophisticated systems and applications. Good practice examples accompanied with European and US cities activities prove how financially beneficial it is for a city to care about its data.

02–14
Waste management 

The month of publishing April 2014 
The operational costs of cities directly relate to energy demands for single city agendas, besides the various networks a significant cost represent waste management. The theme is to tackle not only innovative solutions to various waste treatments but also its collection management. Smart waste collection is one of the basic smart city systems. Examples of citizens’ positive motivation and community programmes are significant part of the technologies’ success.

03–14
Intelligent buildings 

The month of publishing August 2014 
City can support its development indirectly, through citizens’ or developers’ motivation for investing in new technologies that can bring energy and financial savings and from the long term perspective they are very reasonable investment. Local self sustainability is crucial and a city should have a long term support programme to motivate potential investors.
The theme presents possible technologies for modern buildings of 21st century.

04–14
Urban planning and SUMPs

The month of publishing November 2014 
Public space solutions fully relates to sustainable transport. These two inputs to any strategy focus on the causes why e.g. we have so many cars in the cities, not the consequences (we should build other parking houses and roads). Sustainable urban mobility plans (SUMPs) is a tool promoted by EU that could be related to possibility of getting EU funding. In some states (France, Poland) they are obligatory so we should prepare also Czech and Slovak cities to follow this direction.

01–15
Intelligent transport systems and electric vehicles 

The month of publishing February 2015
ITS is the most advanced ICT area and their deployment can solve traffic problems for a tenth of the cost for new infrastructure. ITS i salso a good tool for enhancing the change in modal split in favour of sustainable transport. Handling transport properly is a key success of a city and transport i sone of the four major smart cities domains.

02–15
Active citizen and information technologies 

The month of publishing May 2015
The city does not have sufficient power and funds to make things better in the short time between elections. Using smart mobile applications the city can approach its citizens and gain precious feedback. But the main tools for supporting smart cities concepts are the support of communities projects and programmes, non profit and citizens activities and profiting from activities and knowledge of the citizens.

03–15
Innovative city concepts – smart public transport stop

The month of publishing August 2015
The age of information poses big load on our perception. The overwhelming volume of advertisement and marketing get people „blind“ and i tis sometimes very difficult to distinguish a good piece of information froma ballast. Public space equipped by public funding should support the interests of public regarding quality and quantity of information. Ideal space for provision of non commercial information is public transport stops that can be equipped with smart technologies.

04–15
Cooperative systems and smart vehicles

The month of publishing November 2015
Vehicle is a driver of worlwide economy. Vehicle is everywhere these days. Its technologies significantly influence the segment of traffic management and innovative services provision. Vehicles are to inform each other about accidents in their direction or give some advice by voice where to buy your favourite cappuccino.