The event is co-organised by JPI Urban Europe, the ERA-NET Smart Cities and Communities and the Austrian Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology.
Aim of the Workshop
This workshop aims at bringing together people working in public administration, researchers, business, NGOs and civil society to jointly discuss measures to fully exploit the potential of Smart City and Communities pilot and demonstration projects. The aim is to identify bottlenecks at hand, ways forward and concepts to move from demonstration and pilots to larger scale implementation. Experiences from cities and JPI Urban Europe research projects will be shared and used to reflect on good practice examples and critical conditions.
Workshop Outline
As urban systems by definition are complex and highly depending on local characteristics, upscaling and replication of Smart City and Communities demonstration projects and living labs is a tricky but central issue. On the one hand, the settings and circumstances in piloting projects are speci-fically arranged for the course of demonstration which might not necessarily fully reflect the urban realities. On the other hand, plans and activities might be dedicated to the circumstances in one particular city, district or neighbourhood making the direct application in another setting difficult.
Two aspects that all such Smart City implementation efforts have in common is that they have to rely on INTEGRATED and JOINT efforts. Integrated, cross-sectoral efforts are needed to benefit from Smart City concepts. Various borders, originating from the so-called technical and administrative “silos”, have to be overcome to create a common understanding and platform for Smart City implementation. In addition, JOINT efforts are required to tap upon the available local knowledge from all kind of different stakeholders affected by the projects and to co-create a common urban future. JOINT efforts also increase the democratic legitimacy of Smart City and Community endeavours. In this light – with a huge number of Smart City pilot projects ongoing across Europe – one of the most pressing questions is how to come to larger scale implementation of Smart City strategies and exploitation of the pilot project results under these conditions.