Through the last week, the Covenant of Mayors was in Barcelona for the Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC), the world’s biggest event for cities and urban innovation. The European Commission hosted presence featured a 120 m2 booth and a collection of more than 20 partners, 1 Congress sessions and 4 Agora sessions across the Congress, and 16 booth sessions over 3 days with more than 45 speakers.
SCEWC 2024 kicked off under the banner “Striving for better living for all” with a wide range of solution providers aiming to help cities and towns meet this objective of improving liveability. With this same goal in mind, the Covenant of Mayors – Europe and many of its city signatories were active participants in the discussions held at Barcelona.
The Covenant of Mayors shared a booth with many other EU urban initiatives, including Smart Cities Marketplace (SCM) and NetZeroCities, to showcase how local actions are making a real impact and need to be scaled up, when connected to the right solutions.
Driving Urban Sustainability: what are cities missing?
On the event’s first day, our opening session "Driving Urban Sustainability: Achieving Net-Zero the Just Way" with Smart Cities Marketplace, brought together policymakers and experts to share their experiences and strategies to accelerate climate action.
Our board member, Marc Serra Solé, from the Provincial Council of Barcelona, highlighted the importance of citizen engagement and multilevel governance, explaining that all must be on board for the climate transition to be successful.
We should not let citizens see enemies where there are none, they need to be fully part of the transition. Communication and multilevel governance are a key enabling factor: the national and the regional level should speak to the local level and citizens, and set up open dialogues. (Marc Serra Solé)
Filipe Araújo, Vice-Mayor of Porto, a pioneer city in climate action, recognised the importance of collaboration and sharing practices between cities and towns, crucial to accelerating the transition and implementing effective solutions.
Cities, unlike national governments sometimes, are not competing - we all have the same vision. There are a lot of projects that we have accomplished in Porto that really copied from other cities. And the thing is that we don't have to invent the wheel every time that we need something. (Filipe Araújo)
The CoMmunity at SCEWC
The first day at the Congress already saw the active engagement of signatories under different fronts: whilst Barcelona represented the Covenant in the conversation “Driving Urban Sustainability: Achieving net-zero the just way” together with Porto, Amsterdam and Bydgosczc shared their experience at the booth session “Integrated Support to Smart and Sustainable Cities in Transition”, whilst Alba Iulia, Brno and Zaragoza had the first meeting as part of the city-to-business matchmaking organized by the Global Covenant of Mayors.
The second day kicked off with a crowded session for Spanish cities where the colleagues of the Smart Cities Marketplace facilitated the participation of NGE Finance to talk about existing opportunities beyond grants.
Later on the same day, another closed-door session brought signatories together to discuss challenges related to finance mechanisms and experiences with technical assistance that can help local governments make use of these.
Finally, a booth session jointly organized by the Covenant and Smart Cities Marketplace dove into the advisory service that SCM can provide to any EU city needing support to finetune their project idea. There we could hear the wonderful example of Bydgoszcz who, step by step, moved from commitment and planning toward implementation by composing their own recipe of EU and national funds and support, including the European City Facility (EUCF) and SCM.
In the background, the city-to-business matchmaking organised by the Global Covenant of Mayors continued with Alba Iulia, Zaragoza and Brno, together with other 30 cities from all around the world meeting solution providers that could respond to their priority challenges.
SCEWC confirms itself as a great opportunity for signatories to think out of the box, meet inspiring professionals, learn from other's experiences and, sometimes, get out of your comfort zone. It holds the great potential to make ambition happening, bringing together local governments and solution providers.
Details
- Publication date
- 8 November 2024