Cities of the future should be sustainable, knowledge and innovation oriented, technology-enabled in order to support development and value creation for citizens, businesses, communities, and society. Cities as sustainable organizations should proceed by adopting a smart cities approach as a vision and strategic perspective driving the future urban development. The European framework for designing and implementing smart cities can provide a satisfying path leading cities to plan the urban growth by actively playing an intermediate role in governing and sustaining the ‘helices’ emerging in the urban area as engines driving processes of innovation and new knowledge creation for sustaining the production of public value. Cities are proceeding towards sustainability valuing and sustaining the ‘helices’ as source and organizational framework for driving value creation and building a smart approach.