This year we will have nine more smart cities and municipalities in Slovakia; these are cities and municipalities located in a radius of twenty kilometres from the Mochovce nuclear power plant. Thanks to a grant from the Endowment Fund of Slovak Power Plants in the Pontis Foundation, they will become “smart” and thus improve the quality of life of their inhabitants.

Up to now, municipalities like Jur nad Hronom and Horná Seč have been known to drivers primarily from traffic announcements. However, this will not be true for long because, for example, the primary school and kindergarten in Jur nad Hronom is going to place bicycle shelters in the school premises, so that cyclists can keep their “rides” safe and at the same time be environmentally friendly by riding a bicycle. The municipality of Horná Seč will create a green park, so that drivers can enjoy travelling through the village but primarily so that  the inhabitants can relax and deepen their relationship with the environment.

The municipality of Veľké Kozmálovce will become a beautiful example of how to create a relaxation area for citizens from a non-registered illegal landfill. They will revitalize lands nearby where residential buildings will be built in a few years. The town of Vráble has a similar aim; they will plant greenery in the Lúky housing estate, which is home to many young families with children.

A green park in which a botanical garden will be situated should build a positive relationship between citizens and the environment. One will be built by the Buď zmenou civic association, which will prepare various activities from waste separation to its recovery in the form of attractive structures made from tyres and pallets. The Now civic association in the city of Levice will also be very busy. Since the popularity of electric vehicles is increasing each year, the number of public parking spaces with recharging points is becoming higher. Thanks to the 2017 Ekoobec programme, Levice will no longer be absent on the electric vehicle map and will please environmentally friendly drivers.

A totally different yet still innovative and environmentally friendly solution will be brought by the Rybársky spolok Prekár Tekovské Lužany civic association, which wants to bring back all the beauties of the Prekár water reservoir, which will again become a place for organizing fishing competitions. The inhabitants of the municipality of Vinodol play sport a lot in the local sports facility. In order to make the facility safer after dark, the municipality will equip it with solar-powered lights.

The care of citizens with combined disabilities is surely inspiring but also demanding work. The surrounding community often stands aloof from disabled people. Thanks to the Svetlo pre Olichov civic association, forces will be joined in the municipality of Volkovce, and young people (scouts) and pensioners together with clients will improve the surroundings of their facility: they will create an interactive relaxation area.

Every day we face new challenges of how to use the presence of information technologies in public administration more innovatively and correctly, how to improve public transport and make it more efficient, and how to contribute to environmental protection. We are therefore very pleased that thanks to the Endowment Fund of Slovak Power Plants in the Pontis Foundation, our cities and municipalities can now be called “smart”. The fact that people in Slovakia are not indifferent to the development of local administration has been reflected in the twenty-seven requests for financial support from which the evaluation committee subsequently decided to support nine projects. Overall a total amount of €21,926 has been allocated within the grant programme.

The evaluation committee which decided on the project choice consisted of Veronika Gilanová, the Pontis Foundation; Miroslav Šarišský, Slovenské elektrárne; Róbert Holý, Slovenské elektrárne; Miloslav Jurík, Smart Cities klub; and Dominika Horňáková, the Pontis Foundation, as an observer (without voting rights).