Smart City Expo reconnect urban innovation ecosystem

With over 14,000 attendees from 120 countries, 400 cities and 350 experts, the events spurred again the global debate on urban transformation with resiliency, sustainability, and liveability as the key topics in a post-pandemic landscape. For the first time, Smart City Expo World Congress and Tomorrow Mobility were jointly held with PUZZLE X.

On their hybrid edition, SCEWC and TMWC also registered 16,000 digital attendees who followed the three days of contents and interviews broadcasted through Tomorrow.City, the event’s digital platform. Over 50% of in-person attendees came from abroad.

The Director of Smart City Expo World Congress, Ugo Valenti, said: “This year’s event has proved to be one of the most important editions of Smart City Expo. The urban innovation ecosystem needed to reconnect after 18 months of restrictions and difficulties. And Barcelona has been once again the place chosen by cities, companies and experts from around the world to gather once again and restart a much-needed drive for sustainable urban transformation. We are already preparing the 2022 edition and are very confident it will be the best ever.”

SCEWC tackled the key urban challenges through a conference program structured in eight themes - enabling technologies, energy and environment, mobility, governance, living and inclusion, economy, infrastructure and buildings, and safety and security- and featured keynote speakers such as Carlos Moreno, scientist and Mayor of Paris' Special Envoy for Smart Cities; Jeff Merrit, Head of Urban Transformation at the World Economic Forum who was the first Director of innovation of the city of New York; Renata Ávila, International lawyer and advocate who works at the Stanford Institute of Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence; and María Fernanda Espinosa, former President of the United Nations General Assembly.

World Smart City Awards

The city of Buenos Aires was chosen as Smart City of 2021 for a long running plan of solid waste management that has been able to reduce waste disposition in local landfills and promote waste generation reduction and segregation. Benedetta Tagliabue and Carlos Moreno, received ex aequo the Leadership award for their significant contributions to advancing smart cities projects worldwide during the last 10 years.

A roadmap to the future

Cross industry collaboration has been one of the goals of SCEWC since its inception. The 2021 edition strengthened its role as a world platform for knowledge sharing and widened its reach by co-hosting Tomorrow.Mobility and PUZZLE X.

Tomorrow.Mobility focused on promoting the design and adoption of new sustainable urban mobility models. The event is co-organised by EIT Urban Mobility, an initiative of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, a body of the European Union, and has the support of important companies and institutions.

PUZZLE X is an event aimed at grasping the potential of Frontier materials to solve some of the challenges that society is facing. The initiative includes a yearly event and a venture builder incubator to support materials deep tech startups, attract investment and build a global ecosystem.

After closing the 2021 show, SCEWC is already working on its 11th edition, which will be held from 15th to 17th of November 2022.