The Smart City congress expands its focus to urban buildings and the blue economy

The Smart City Expo World Congress reaches its eleventh edition with the forecast of approaching pre-pandemic figures, with the participation of 800 exhibitors and 20,000 attendees, compared to the 1,000 stands and 24,000 congress attendees in 2019. The congress will host more than 700 cities in two pavilions of Fira de Barcelona's Gran Via venue from Tuesday, November 15 to Thursday, November 17. This year's most anticipated guest will be Vitaly Klitschko, the current mayor of Kyiv (Ukraine), who will visit the exhibition to explain how his city has had to technologically prepare to survive during the war with Russia.

The smart cities congress will reinforce its focus on specific sectors that began last year with the second editions of Tomorrow.Mobility and Puzzle X. The first, co-organized by Fira de Barcelona and EIT Urban Mobility, is consolidated with 100 exhibitors, including more than 60 startups. There will also be space for companies such as Deloitte, B:SM, FGC, Moventia, Racc, Renfe, TMB, Keolis, and Mercedes. Among the topics to be discussed will be the 15-minute city, urban air mobility with drones, and data spaces to provide coverage to public transport operators and mobility service providers (MaaS). Likewise, Puzzle X, focused on future materials such as graphene, will repeat with an extensive congress program that serves to lay the foundations for the future development of pilots and industrial applications.

The commitment to verticals such as mobility and new materials will be accompanied by the premiere of Tomorrow.Building and Tomorrow.Oceans. With Tomorrow.Building, solutions to reduce the environmental impact of urban buildings, responsible for between 30% and 40% of CO2, will be analyzed, while, with Tomorrow.Oceans, the opportunities of the blue economy to make the maritime sector more sustainable will be discussed, in line with the Smart Ports program.

Among the more than 400 international experts who will participate in this edition of Smart City will be University College London Professor of Mathematics of Cities Hannah Fry, specialized in deciphering the chaos of a city through numbers, analyzing people's behavior patterns in issues ranging from shopping and transport to crime and terrorism.

Also participating will be Professor of Architectural Design at Princeton University Liz Diller, who has spent decades studying how to modify human behavior through public spaces, and the so-called Gangsta Gardener, Ron Finley, who began reclaiming abandoned lots to plant vegetables in Los Angeles and has managed to generate new dynamics among neighbors.