Despite the ongoing discussion of the recent years, there is no agreed definition of a ‘smart city’, while strategic planning in this field is still largely unexplored. Inspired by this, the purpose of this paper was to identify the forces shaping the smart city conception and, by doing so, to begin replacing the currently abstract image of what it means to be one. The paper commences by dividing the recent history of smart cities into two large sections – urban futures and the knowledge and innovation economy. The urban futures strand shows that technology has always played an important role in forward-looking visions about the city of the future. The knowledge and innovation economy strand shows that recent technological advancements have introduced a whole new level of knowledge management and innovation capabilities in the urban context. The paper proceeds to explicate the current technology push and demand pull for smart city solutions. On one hand, technology advances rapidly and creates a booming market of