Some events are simply unmissable, and Smart City Expo World Congress is definitely one of them! The year 2019 saw the 9th edition of the exposition under the theme “Cities made of Dreams”, which demonstrated concrete solutions smart cities achieved. After almost a decade of promotion of the smart city concept around the world, the event, organised by Fira de Barcelona, welcomed 1000 exhibiting companies and 700 cities at the venue Gran Via from 19-21 November.
MAKING-CITY was present at this event among the 14th Smart Cities and Communities (SCC) Projects, funded by the European Commission Research and Innovation Framework Horizon 2020. These projects are jointly working toward the development of Smarter Cities to contribute to achieving climate action goals by creating scalable and transferable solutions.
For MAKING-CITY, this event was a great opportunity to promote the Positive Energy District (PED) operational models and explain how it will help cities around the world to adopt a long-term City Vision for energy transition and sustainable urbanisation. Lighthouse cities stakeholders form Groningen (Netherlands) and Oulu (Finland) were part of the event to share the first results of the project.
Because the PED concept appears as a step beyond the current European building regulations, innovations in MAKING-CITY are both technical and logistical. Smart City Expo World Congress was a great opportunity to explain to other projects how we manage a 60-month project with 34 partners in 8 cities.