Smart City Live connects the urban ecosystem with an innovative digital approach

The new Smart City Live (SCL), the digital edition of the Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC), the summit for smart cities and urban solutions organized by Fira de Barcelona, has concluded after reconnecting the broad ecosystem of smart cities and establishing itself as a new benchmark for digital events. For two days, the event has brought together 242 speakers and cities from the five continents and will continue the debate and the promotion of urban transformation on a permanent basis from the new Tomorrow.City platform.

SCL has structured its content program around six main themes: Adapting urban mobility to safe and sustainable travel; Technologies to address global urban challenges; Redesigning cities and urban living for all; Ensuring an inclusive economic recovery; Resilient infrastructures and urban environments to build back better; and The future of retail in a digital era. After broadcasting over 44 hours of content, SCL has registered 20,489 unique users from 144 countries, 76% international users. Attendees have logged a total of 114,215 views.

The director of Smart City Live, Ugo Valenti, said that “this edition’s keynotes have outlined the landscape and the main challenges that cities must face in the context of the pandemic but also in the future.  Our goal has been to reactivate the entire ecosystem of urban innovation, ensure that shared experiences will help to accelerate recovery at a global level and contribute to this collective goal. This is the purpose of Smart City Live.”

In this sense, the Director of In-House Business at Fira de Barcelona, Salvador Tasque, expressed that “Smart City Live has committed to a format completely adapted to the digital medium and designed to offer content in a different way. The results prove that we have managed to establish a new benchmark for the celebration of virtual events that will add to our face-to-face events that Fira de Barcelona will resume at its venues”.

Featured speakers included Parag Khanna, Geopolitical strategist and founder of FutureMap; Jeff Merrit, Head of IoT, Robotics & Smart Cities at the World Economic Forum; Carlo Ratti, architect and director of the MIT Senseable City Lab; Saskia Sassen, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at the Columbia University; Brent Toderian, urbanist and founder of Toderien Urban Works; and Sameh Wabah, Global Director for the World Bank’s Urban, Disaster Risk Management, Resilience and Land Global Practice.

Additionally, mayors and government representatives from all over the globe took part in the event such as Ada Colau, Mayor of Barcelona; Michael Müller, Mayor of Berlin; Lori Lightfoot, Mayor of Chicago; Núria Marín, Mayor of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat; Daniel Quintero, Mayor of Medellín; and President of Metropolis; Mohamed Boudra, Mayor of Al Hoceima and President of UCLG; Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris; Anna König Jerlmyr, Mayor of Stockholm; Teresa Ribera, Fourth Vice-President of the Government and Minister for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge; Government of Spain; Takuya Hirai, Minister for Digital Transformation, Social Security, Tax Number System and Information Technology Policy – Government of Japan.

Among the companies who participated in SCL were Acciona, Alcatel Lucent, AMB, Axis, China Unicom, Deloitte, Enel-X, Engie, FIA, Huawei, Keolis, Mastercard, Microsoft, Nokia, RACC, SAP, Seat, Siemens, Shanghai Oriental Group, Smart Ports and Sorigué.

New Tomorrow.City platform
Smart City Live was held through the new Tomorrow.City platform aimed at becoming a permanent hub of urban knowledge and designed to offer companies and public administrations resources that combine research, technology, and investment throughout the year. With a multi-stakeholder approach and through collaborative intelligence, it aims to accelerate sustainable and inclusive cities for all and will run through four different fields of actions focusing on data, knowledge, business and awareness throughout the year.

Among the many services that Tomorrow.City offers are the Tech Radar, a constantly updated digital portfolio of the newest technologies, prototypes, and market-ready solutions available; the Tomorrow.Talent service, a flexible learning experience designed to help professionals through first-class training in the key topics of innovation and smart cities; the Tomorrow.Podcast, Tomorrow.Mag magazine seeking to raise awareness about the key challenges, solutions and strategies developed in the smart cities field; and the Tomorrow.Observatory, a daily scan of the top international urban innovation sources with a selection of the key stories and studies published worldwide.

World Smart City Awards
This year the city of Shanghai (China) has been chosen as the Smart City of 2020 for its Smart Shanghai – People-Oriented Smart City initiative. Its strategy to develop a wide array of resources including the deployment of intensive digital Infrastructure, e-government services, a City Brain and the integration of information technology and industry. The Plan’s strategic objectives and its current achievements have been essential in the jury’s decision.

SCEWC will return in 2021 in its face-to-face format, digitally complemented by Tomorrow.City, and will be jointly held with Smart Mobility Congress and Retail & Brand Experience World Congress from November 16th to 18th at Fira de Barcelona’s Gran Via venue.

Barcelona, November 19^th 2020

Folc Lecha
+34 932 333 555
flecha@firabarcelona.com