Smart governance: A tool for climate mitigation in cities? Alfréd Kaiser, Tatiána Kluvánková SPECTRA Centre of Excellence EU, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Vazozova 5, 812 43 Bratislava, Slovakia {alfred.kaiser, tatiana.kluvankova }@stuba.sk Abstract. Label of smart city is in recent years very fashionable and attractive. Because of this we are focusing on one of the main pillars of this concept, in our case it is Smart governance. Smart governance is emerging concept that can be used at different scales and environments. In our paper, we address the potential of implementation of smart governance towards mitigation of climate change effects in cities. By these changes we have in our mind’s heat island effect which is felt especially in the hot summer time. We are about to provide a literature review of smart governance and how it’s implementation can improve the urban environment. The reason why the use of smart governance is inevitable is that the implementation of this concept may improve the communication of all stakeholders starting from local residents through non-governmental organization to municipalities. Improvement of communication can also lead to better addressing of the requirements of local residents towards improvement of their lives and also to mitigate the effects of climate change in cities. When people can see profits from the actions that have been taken to manage the local environment then they are likely to participate into the system. Keywords: Climate mitigation, community, heat islands, multi-level governance, semi-public, smart city, smart governance 1 Introduction Nowadays, more and more people live in urban areas. This transition brings numerous challenges, providing the necessary utilities to large amounts of people living in the same area. Thanks to the revolution of the information technology and big data sets, the concept of the “smart city” has emerged, and nowadays a lot more information is available about different types of utilities. According to Caragliu et al. (2011), the increasing urbanization is creating a need for the city planners to deal with reinforced complexity regarding urban factors, such as food and water supply, traffic management and waste disposal and climate change. Against this background, the concept of “smart cities” has been introduced, described as a device for dealing with these service problems in a common framework. When it comes to climate change, Mancarella (2012) states further that reducing the energy footprint in cities is crucial. Integrated operation and planning of the urban system are described as essential tools for maximizing the environmental efficiency. It also means that the cities should strive to reduce their problem with heat islands. Especially cities where temperature in summer exceeds 30 degrees of Celsius and for day temperatures stay over 30 degrees for more than one or two days.