This paper explores walking and walkability in the smart city and makes a case for their centrality in the debate on the resilience and sustainability of smart cities, as outlined in the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is argued that, while the human/inhabitant-centric paradigm of urban development consolidates, and research on walking, walkability, and pedestrian satisfaction flourishes, the inroads of ICT render it necessary to reflect on these issues in the conceptually- and geographically-delimited space of the smart city. More importantly, it becomes imperative to make respective findings useful and usable for policymakers. To this end, by approaching walking and walkability through the lens of utility, the objective of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework in which the relevance of walking and walkability, hereafter referred to as w², as a distinct subject of research in the smart cities debate is validated. This framework is then employed to construct a model of a composite w² smart city utility index. With the focus on the development of the conceptual framework, in which the w² utility index is embedded, this paper constitutes the first conceptual step of the composite index development process. The value added of this paper is three-fold: First, the relevance of walking and walkability as a distinct subject of research in the realm of smart cities research is established. Second, a mismatch between end-users’ satisfaction derived from walking and their perception of walkability and the objective factors influencing walking and walkability is identified and conceptualized by referencing the concept of utility. Third, a model smart city w² utility index is proposed as a diagnostic and prognostic tool that, in the subsequent stages of research and implementation, will prove useful for decisionmakers and other stakeholders involved in the process of managing smart cities.

In the extant body of literature on the servitization of the economy, on the one hand, and determinants of growth and development, on the other, the classic question of revealed comparative advantage (RCA) plays a prominent role. Regardless of the popularity, relevance, and validity of the use of the RCA as a part of multivariate queries on the above topics, this paper argues that the RCA alone offers a rather static insight into a country’s economic performance. Most importantly, the classic take on the RCA does not allow us to query a country’s comparative advantage and degree of specialization in the services sector. By inserting itself in the broader discussion on ways of bypassing the limitations inherent in the classic RCA index, this paper proposes a novel take on the RCA index, i.e., the Visvizi–Wosiek RCA (VWRCA) index, and, subsequently, applies it to the study of the evolution of the services sector in Poland over the period 2010–2019. The added value of the VWRCA index is threefold. (i) By recognizing the increasing role of services in the global economy, it serves as a useful tool in queries aimed at examining the structure of a given economy, the degree of specialization in the production of certain services, and the real revealed comparative advantage a country has in the production of a certain group/category of services. (ii) By focusing solely on services, the VWRCA index allows us to examine the volume and velocity of trade in services independently from the volume of trade in goods. (iii) Due to the resulting methodological accuracy, it enables the inclusion of a temporal dimension in the analysis, which in turn gives cues as to specific developments and the actual performance of a given economy regarding the evolution of the services sector.