“Middle-sized cities are a fascinating focus group“, says smart cities project manager Univ.Prof. Dr. Rudolf Giffinger from the TU of Vienna. “120 million people, i.e. not quite 40 percent of all of Europe’s city dwellers live in about 600 cities of that size. They have an enormous potential but are often in the shade of the big metropolises. It is difficult for them to position themselves, sometimes they have to fight image problems, and they are overlooked by investors. But they have a major advantage: Due to their size they are flexible and can pick up points with smartness“. To heighten the awareness of middle-sized cities and offer them an instrument for positioning themselves, Giffinger and his team of scientists developed a scientifically sound ranking instrument. They examined 70 European middle-sized cities and studied what makes these cities smart as lebensraum and economic locations on the basis of the six characteristics economy, people, governance, mobility, environment and living. Giffinger defines: “A middle-sized city is considered to be a smart city if it demonstrates forward-looking development in the six characteristics on the basis of a combination of local circumstances and activities carried out by politics, business, and the inhabitants.“