The article presents the concept of intelligent city. Cities are unquestionably central to many topics in economics and regional science: the business location, the driving forces for business, the economic growth factors, externalities and amenities, knowledge spillovers and knowledge hubs. But what, exactly, is city in this context. This paper argues that today city should be seen more as an intelligent economic system allowing the utilisation of economic and public value than a technology- rich and smartly managed place. Thinking about cities through this particular lens allows insights from a variety of fields – including public services analysis in urban economics, regional science studies and business studies in economic geography – to be applied. This opens new approaches to issues such as institutional and territorial origins of governance processes.

The paper attempted to define the basis of city transformations that conform to the smart concept. The objective of the paper is to relate the concept of a smart city, which is quite frequently discussed in literature related to the subject, with functioning and development of the city’s economy, in a way that would allow monitoring economic processes taking place in the city, and also to find a response to the question as to the extent to which the smart city creates a new city economy. Does it expand the city economy by new elements, generate new economic mechanisms, allow the implementation of growth paths different than those to date? This objective is particularised by a description of selected issues of urban economics. With this in mind the paper discusses an approach to managing supply and demand on the basis of theoretical assumptions defined by Mudie and Cottam (1993) transposed on realities connected with provision of municipal public services in conditions of a smart city. Furthermore, sample solutions were presented related to the smart city, which reflect theoretical conclusions contained in the paper. The paper ends with a presentation of logics related to growing economy in a smart city. The economy of a smart city, ultimately an intelligent economy of the city, is created in a laminar way. Under the pressure of technological, social and political surroundings the city is permeated by social and culture intelligence, forming gradually a new economic quality. In the paper we emphasised that the concept of a smart city still remains a question of the future to a much bigger extent than one of the present time. A smart city slowly emerges from the combination of diverse megatrends and development trends characteristic for communities and economies of the second decade of the 21st century.