International symposium on the subject of Smart Cities

Credit: Berlin Partner/Wüstenhagen

17.03.2021
International symposium on the subject of Smart Cities

Brain City Berlin

The online event “Redefining the Smart City” on 23 and 24 March will deal with the current state of research on Smart Cities. The CityLab Berlin, together with the Berlin Senate Chancellery and the Centre for Digital Governance/Hertie School, is inviting international researchers and Smart City experts to various workshops. The results of the conference are intended to flow into the Berlin Smart City strategy. Participation is free of charge.

Which goals should be achieved on the way to the Smart City and how? The international specialist conference “Redefining the Smart City” on 23 and 24 March, to which the CityLAB Berlin, together with the Berlin Senate Chancellery and the Centre for Digital Governance/Hertie School, are extending an invitation, will deal with this overall question. In four workshops, renowned scientists and experts from the field of Smart City will report on their experiences and provide insight into their projects.

The symposium aims to provide an overview of the current state of research on Smart Cities. The topics addressed in the workshops: Citizen orientation, cooperation between business and administration, data governance and administrative capacity in the Smart City context. The focus is on the Smart City, which is oriented towards the common good, and how to get there. While in the past few years the focus was mainly on technical aspects, now the focus is on the opportunities of digitisation. Those who operate efficiently can achieve climate goals more easily; those who share data can work inclusively and involve others.

Another approach of the conference is to involve citizens outside science, business and politics in shaping the city of tomorrow. Whether Antwerp, Barcelona, Helsinki or Santiago de Chile – more and more cities around the world are actively involving their residents in solving urgent problems such as climate change, resource conservation or the sustainable improvement of urban infrastructure. Berlin also launched a multi-stage participation process this year to involve citizens in the development of a smart city framework strategy. The symposium “Redefining the Smart City” is one of the first events in the concept phase that has already started.

“The most successful cases of citizen participation are those in which defined and specific tasks are formulated, in which the project leaders have identified a number of participants whose expertise is well matched to the task at hand and where there is a clear process and workflow”, according to Prof. Dr. Beth Simone Noveck, Head of the Governance Lab at New York University (NYU) and Chief Innovation Officer of the US state of New Jersey, in an article for "Tagesspiegel Background“ (in German only). She will open the symposium with a keynote address on 23 March. Each workshop is followed by a comprehensive discussion. The findings from the symposium are to be incorporated into the Berlin Smart City framework strategy. (vdo)