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Our world is changing. Cities of the twenty-first century are becoming independent actors on the international scene. Due to the decentralization, gradually cities gain more power to independently identify their policies, strategies and related priorities, as well as ways of their implementation. As a result, several initiatives can be implemented at the city level at a much faster pace and more efficiently than ever before. The United Nations’ (UN) “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” focuses on issues related to sustainable development. In relation to cities, it aims to make them “inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.” This chapter investigates the conceptual foundations of the term smart sustainable cities and summarizes strategies that have been undertaken in cities, as a means of making them smart and sustainable. Against this backdrop, by focusing on Ukraine, an implementation algorithm based on selected examples drawn from Europe is proposed.

Big data is a buzzword of our times, and yet the awareness of what big data is, how it permeates our daily lives, and how it is applied either in the policy-making process or in the business sector remains relatively low. From a different perspective, while specialists, that is, practitioners and researchers, dealing with the technical facets of big data successfully uncover new features, new domains, and new opportunities related to big data, there is a need of evaluating and examining these findings through the lens of social sciences and management. This chapter offers an insight into key issues and developments that shape the broad and multi-directional big data debate. To this end, the content of the book is elaborated and the key findings are highlighted. In this way, this chapter serves as a very useful guide into the question of how big data is applied across issues and domains and how it is valid and relevant to all of us today.