This past week the third Intelligent Cities Challenge (ICC) Advisory Board meeting brought together a range of key stakeholders from organisations such as the World Economic Forum, UN, MIT SENSEable City Lab and OECD and more, to exchange on new developments that will further shape the initiative’s journey.
The Proximity and Social Economy Ecosystem
The Proximity and Social Economy Ecosystem and the Scenarios for the Transition Pathway took centre stage at the discussions. As one of the 14 key industrial ecosystems at EU level that will contribute towards the Industrial Strategy and making Europe more resilient, it puts emphasis on local and short value chains, on human-centric city models, like the 15-minute city and on social economy business models.
The Commission presented building blocks of the transition pathway (including establishing the vision, potential bottlenecks and wider context), outlined the process (the public consultation is currently open until end of February 2022) and explained the three focus areas of the transition pathway (resilience, green transition and digital transition). The overall objective is to co-create together with stakeholders concrete actions and commitments to step up the green and digital transition and strengthen the resilience of the Proximity and Social Economy ecosystem.
Participants were asked about the scenarios they saw likely for cities in 2030 in terms of development of a green and digital proximity and social economy ecosystem and about the most important challenges concerning these scenarios.
The Proximity and Social Economy Ecosystem and the scenarios for its transition were largely welcomed by attendees, who observed its unique position to improve cities through developing a more citizen-oriented dialogue and consultation. The opportunity to ultimately to manage the green and digital transition together was also applauded.
It was further observed that as the social economy will contribute towards recovery and help cities to become more resilient, coordination across all levels of government is a successful tool to allow for this. The wider societal impacts were also mentioned, with the Proximity and Social Economy target at keeping social cohesion and inclusion and the social economy to address inequalities.
Key takeaways
Each speaker brought a range of different issues to the table which saw a number of key topics discussed.
- Digital literacy and skills gaps were one recurring topic. It was highlighted that whilst digitalisation is being used for many solutions, yet it can worsen the digital gap. The need for the whole population, the elderly, the most vulnerable, civil administrators and citizens alike to receive digital trainings was emphasised. Technology is an enabler for sustainable growth, yet the issues of access to city data, security, equity and protection of digital rights need to be addressed. Within the UN, some countries are promoting the idea of developing a frame for “Technology Development Goals” following the model of SDGs to measure progress. .
- The use of sharing economy platforms that enable sharing and reusing spare capacity, infrastructure and land-use – for use beyond houses, or cars was discussed. It was encouraged that they are also used for enabling sharing between citizens to further social innovation, fighting energy poverty, mobility poverty, etc., in cities to render them more sustainable.
- The need to reinvigorate the business centres in cities following new urban patterns that have been identified because of the opportunities of remote working. This should be done by adapting and reusing of the city centres.
- The decarbonization of:
- Buildings (public and private) – the need for cities to invest in retrofitting and compactness by setting urban planning parameters whilst simultaneously tackling the social housing crisis was highlighted. Areas that can be utilised to ensure this involve: Renovation Wave; social housing; share and reuse spare city assets, physical, social and recreational infrastructure; circular economy.
- Urban transport – which could be done through improving bikeways and focusing on human-centric city models;
- Local energy systems and land-use - cities are lacking the capacity to finance major infrastructure projects so need to work with utility companies and national government. The opportunities made available to the real estate sector due to the transition of buildings was emphasised as was the use of tools such as Renovation Wave; clean energy infrastructure (e.g. EV chargers); and mapping and matching local green energy supply and demand.
- The need for powerful public-private partnerships - social cooperation between government and cities is essential as is regional level cooperation of the city with its surroundings.
- Global sustainability initiatives such as COP 26 which saw some cities make pledges and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals which have been negatively impacted, with 70% of cities not on track and the lack of travel hindering progress.
- Issues with access to finance – cities have never had access to such large amounts of money, yet they are often overwhelmed with lack of capacity to spend it.
100 Climate Neutral and Smart Cities Mission
Finally, a brief introduction to the 100 Climate Neutral and Smart Cities Mission was provided which explained how the cities selected would show the example to other cities that would follow in their own path to climate neutrality by 2050. The participants were given the chance to provide feedback which heard the recommendation for legislation on the matter, amidst other ideas. A need for piloting that constructively takes on board the early failures and successes to reduce the risk was stressed.
The ICC appreciates the fruitful exchange and will ensure these useful discussions are well used ahead of the next Advisory Board meeting.