The Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEW), organized by Fira de Barcelona, is the main international summit on smart cities and urban solutions. This year, the trade fair entity wants to adapt the event to the reality imposed by covid-19, while reaffirming its clear commitment to the Smart City Expo. That is why Fira has decided to promote the innovative Smart City Live, a digital event that will be held on November 17 and 18. The event will present a new virtual format with the aim of providing a knowledge platform to discuss the main challenges of cities in the current situation and continue to be the world leader in urban innovation.
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Smart City Live will once again bring together the main protagonists, institutions, and international experts on smart cities. It will do so through a technological platform, which will allow live content to be broadcast and on-demand videos to be viewed. The program is structured in two blocks. On November 17, a live television program will be broadcast through the event's website and its social networks, which will analyze the impact of the coronavirus on cities through interviews, debates, reports, and success stories. On November 18, workshops and side events will be held to discuss the main challenges facing cities beyond the pandemic.
The director of SCEW, Ugo Valenti, argues that this year's main objective is "to offer a platform to accelerate the recovery of urban ecosystems." "Undoubtedly, the current situation will change cities and their functioning, but it can do so by helping us build metropolises capable of providing better services and resources to their inhabitants and being prepared to respond to new threats. Smart City Live is our contribution to this collective project," explains Valenti.
Looking ahead to next year, Fira de Barcelona expects SCEW to return to its usual format and be held jointly with the Smart Mobility Congress and Retail & Brand Experience World Congress, from November 16 to 18 at Fira de Barcelona's Gran Vía venue.
Parag Khanna, Saskia Sassen, Carlo Ratti, and Sameh Wabah, the main speakers
The most digital edition of Smart City will feature international figures such as Parag Khanna, Saskia Sassen, Carlo Ratti, and Sameh Wabah. All of them will analyze the global impact of the pandemic and, in particular, how it has affected cities and how they are redefining themselves to adapt to this new reality. In addition, the Smart City Live speakers will interact and answer questions from attendees, and their conferences will be recorded on the platform specifically created for the event.
Parag Khanna is one of the world's leading geopolitical analysts, specializing in the key global role of cities on the planet and how hyperconnected metropolises are building their own network that could become the main global engine in the future. Saskia Sassen is a professor of Sociology at Columbia University and has studied cities, immigration, and states within the framework of the world economy, with inequality, gender, and digitalization as variables that define her thinking.
Carlo Ratti is the director of the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and founding partner of the Carlo Ratti Associati design and innovation firm, as well as a globally recognized expert in smart cities. Finally, Sameh Wabah is the Global Director for Urban, Disaster Risk Management, Resilience and Land at the World Bank and an expert in urban planning and architectural engineering.
In addition to excellent speakers, Smart City Live will bring together representatives from the public and private sectors. First, representatives from cities, regions, and countries will participate, such as the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau; the mayor of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Núria Marín; the mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot; the mayor of Medellín, Daniel Quintero; the mayor of Berlin, Michael Müller; the mayor of Al Hoceima, Mohamed Boudra; the Minister for Digital Transformation, Social Security, Tax System and IT Policy of Japan, Takuya Hirai; and the Chief Digital Officer of London, Theo Blackwell.
Delegations from the Generalitat, the Barcelona Provincial Council, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Icex, Aicep-Portugal, Germany, Belgium, Dit+Bournemouth (United Kingdom), Enterprise Estonia, Kotra (Republic of Korea), Luxembourg, Nordic Countries, and the Zhejiang region (China) will also participate.
The smart cities summit will also feature the presence of prominent representatives from the private sector, such as 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, to showcase some of the tools and strategies they have developed in recent months.
A 365-day-a-year platform
Coinciding with the celebration of the new Smart City Live, Fira de Barcelona, in collaboration with the Mediapro group, has launched a large digital platform with the aim of creating a permanent knowledge hub for the smart cities sector. Tomorrow.City will broadcast the Smart City Live conferences and presentations live but will last beyond the event and aims to offer companies and public administrations resources on technology, training, research, and investment throughout the year. With a multidisciplinary approach and based on collaborative intelligence, its objective is to accelerate the development of sustainable and inclusive cities and will be articulated through four different areas of action: knowledge, business, training and talent, and dissemination.
The director of SCEWC, Ugo Valenti, hopes that Tomorrow.City will be the basis for a knowledge hub on smart cities and a benchmark for global content distribution: "The launch of Tomorrow.City allows us to go much further than the events we organize both in Barcelona and in other parts of the planet. The new platform concentrates all the knowledge in the field of smart cities, constantly updates it, and offers it 365 days a year to all actors involved in urban transformation globally. And furthermore, we do it through tools for dissemination, training, joint reflection, and promotion of new projects and business."