The retrofitting and renewal of modern-era socialist housing estates is a prominent issue throughout the world. There are different political choices to deal with dilapidated socialist housing estates. The transformation of such estates in post-socialist cities has so far focused primarily on improving their physical conditions and increasing the energy efficiency building-by-building. However, an integrated and area-based regeneration approach would have greater potential to influence the entire neighbourhood, as well as the inhabitants' environmental behaviour. The Smart City is a concept that can achieve environmental sustainability ambitions as well as large housing estate regeneration goals. This chapter describes the implementation of the Smart City concept to the renovation of a Soviet-era apartment buildings area, based on the example of the SmartEnCity project in Tartu, Estonia.

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Mobile positioning data has been mentioned in many agendas as a new input for official statistics. In current paper, we compared four different spatial interpolation methods of mobile positioning data. Best results to describe the population distribution appeared with adaptive Morton grid model where the R 2 was 0.95. Widely used point-in-polygon and arealweighted interpolation gave much weaker results (R 2 = 0.42; R 2 = 0.35).

Coping with global climate challenges requires changes in both individual practices and the technical infrastructure in which people operate. Retrofitting existing buildings with smart and sustainable technologies shows the potential in reducing the environmental impacts of the housing sector and improving the quality of life for residents. However, the efficiency of these means depends on their individual and societal acceptance. This calls for the need to incorporate social practice theories into the discussion of smart cities and technology adoption. This study aims to understand how smart retrofit intervention in an extensive pioneering smart city project in Estonia is perceived among the residents with different dispositions towards the environment and technology in an early phase of the intervention. We interviewed the residents of 18 Soviet-era apartment buildings which underwent a complete retrofit into nearly zero-energy buildings equipped with smart technologies. The results showed that pro-technology residents expressed high interest and trust towards smart retrofit intervention, while residents with environmentally inclined dispositions conveyed more critical arguments. This indicates that individuals’ underlying dispositions may result in different social practices and that a diverse set of engagement approaches are crucial for the success and social acceptance of large-scale pioneering projects in the housing sector.