On September 26, 2019 Dr. Sasa Drezgic, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Rijeka and Dr. Nicholas Zingale, Associate Professor at the Maxine Goodman Levin 
College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University presented their work on smart cities at the University of Maryland’s National Center for Smart Growth. The visit was organized as part of the ongoing work of the Unger Program and the Internet of Things Collaborative.
Transdisciplinary approach to smart and sensible cities.
Dr. Zingale discussed his work in transdisciplinary approaches to collaboration in the smart city space and how these approaches have moved to the forefront of smart and sensible city initiatives with a focal point of social, legal, and technological deployment. He demonstrated how the IOTC integrates a variety of disciplines, including law, engineering, urban studies, health, and management, to conduct groundbreaking research, uncover new resources, and educate future leaders on the challenges created by new technology. And how IOTC has partnered with communities and governmental organizations throughout Greater Cleveland and Northeast Ohio.
Adding a European perspective to smart cities. 
Dr. Drezgic provided insight into Smart Cities from the European Perspective, explaining that Smart city development is a comprehensive undertaking, which entails many fields of urban development and assumes quite diverse geographic, social, economic, fiscal and other setups.
He discussed with the group the challenge in providing answers on the question of the trade-off between top-down and bottom-up approaches to smart city development and shared some European cases to provide examples on current practices and implementation problems.