Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC), the leading event on cities and smart urban solutions organized by Fira de Barcelona, will gather representatives of more than 400 cities from around the world from November 16 to 18. For its tenth anniversary edition, SCEWC will bring together the mayors from Ankara, Barcelona, The Hague, Kazan, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Medellín, Montevideo, Prague, Quito and Vilnius together with representatives from cities such as Amsterdam, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Frankfurt, Kiev, Madrid, Málaga, Milano, New York, Paris, Philadelphia, Sao Paolo, Santiago de Chile, Stockholm and Rio de Janeiro to share experiences and promote initiatives on urban transformation.
The international summit will also host the delegations from other cities and regions including those from Antioquia (Colombia), Bochum (Germany), Bordeaux (France), Braunschweig (Germany), Dresden (Germany), Flanders (Belgium), Podgorica (Montenegro), Pune (India), the State of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Tampere (Finland), Toulouse (France) and Wolfsburg (Germany), and countries such as Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Indonesia, India, Turkey, Portugal, and Puerto Rico.
The director of SCEWC, Ugo Valenti, said “this year’s edition of Smart City Expo World Congress is one of the most necessary since the event kicked off back in 2011. Not only it is our 10th anniversary edition but it comes at a time when cities need to be together even more. The pandemic has shifted the urgency of some improvements and the quick deployment of certain technologies has become a top priority for all. This is why gathering representatives from local governments from all over the world is crucial. Debates and agreements made during these days will impact the near future of citizens all over the world.”
SCEWC will showcase the latest initiatives from several countries and territories. The exhibition space will feature pavilions from Austria, Belgium, Canada, Catalonia, Chile, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hessen, Iran, Israel, Italy, Latvia, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Saxony, Spain, Sweden and USA.
On its 10th edition SCEWC will be a hybrid event. In addition to the on-site conferences, a parallel digital program will be broadcast online through the Tomorrow City platform, taking SCEWC further than it has ever gone and spreading the urban knowledge assembled in Barcelona to a widened global community.
The UCLG World Council
SCEWC will also provide the space for the yearly meeting of the United Cities and Local Governments Organization (UCLG), the largest global network of cities and local, regional, and metropolitan governments. UCLG will gather its World Council in Barcelona, under the title “Smart Cities and Territories, Pillars of the Common Agenda” to define the strategy of the municipal movement and its contribution to the UN Common Agenda. The World Council is composed of 342 representatives from 97 countries of the world. The meetings usually gather around 500 participants and in 2021 it will have a hybrid component, with sessions being held both physically in Barcelona and on-line.
Knowledge platform
The 2021 edition will be jointly held with two new events: Tomorrow.Mobility and PUZZLE X. Tomorrow.Mobility will focus 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 aims to grasp 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.
Barcelona, November 8th 2021
firabarcelona.com