Urban Planning, Ecological Transition, Urban Services and Housing

The Smart City Expo World Congress was held in Barcelona from 5 to 7 November, offering a prominent international fair on cities and urban innovation organised by Fira de Barcelona with municipal collaboration. The Smart City Expo brought together more than 850 cities from 130 countries, along with 1,150 exhibitors, almost 630 speakers and more than 26,000 visitors.

The fair saw Barcelona promote its vision of a city moving towards climate neutrality and guaranteeing access to housing through urban solutions for a fairer, healthier and more liveable city.

Under the slogan “Breathing Innovation”, over twenty initiatives from all areas of the consortium were shared, introducing visitors to the innovative policies to guarantee access to housing, combat climate change and adapt the city to its effects.

The projects on display at the stand included the Programme for Local Interior Spaces (PEPI) to revitalise unused spaces and create over 22 hectares of green space, and the generation of temporary shade structures resulting from one of the urban innovation challenges by the Fundació BIT Habitat.

Other projects on display included the by-law on reusing grey water to cut the consumption of safe water; the VIGIA project to monitor the quality of cleaning and waste collection in the city; integrated technologies, promoted by the Municipal Institute of Information Technology to optimise public space, and the Rider Dome, which started from an urban challenge by Barcelona Innova Lab Mobility, an initiative by Barcelona City Council, BIT Habitat and Fira Barcelona to reduce accidents involving motorcycles.

International congress

The congress also provides an opportunity to promote Barcelona to the world. Throughout the week of the Smart City, directorates such as the one for International Economic Promotion received international delegations, explaining to them all the city’s projects inside and outside of the congress site. Specifically, fifteen delegations were received from different parts of the world, including Germany, China, Uruguay, Saudi Arabia, Belgium and Japan.

This year’s event includes a new section known as the Discover Barcelona Talks, with sessions addressing the questions which international institutions ask about. In all, 25 different delegations took part in this new activity, from countries such as: Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Brazil, Romania, Singapore, Poland, Germany, USA, Holland, Hong Kong and Colombia.

BIT Habitat also made the most of the event to show the innovation projects being promoted by the city and exchange visions and proposals with other national and international institutions, holding more than ten meetings with them.

The Municipal Institute of Information Technology also held several meetings with international delegations such as those from Japan and Luxembourg, and presented various projects in different speaking areas at the congress, including the EDIC and Digital Twins projects.

Innovation to experience Barcelona’s green transformation

The Agora space at the city’s stand was also a showcase for presenting and debating Barcelona’s most innovative projects with those attending. Notable projects among those presented include the regeneration of housing blocks with innovative and sustainable kits, and innovation in generating modular and sustainable seasonal shade structures, directed by BIT Habitat and Barcelona City Council’s Office for Climate Change and Sustainability. Another was the Barcelona Dades project, a new interactive portal, and another was the Espai Networking: energy and environment sector, promoted by Barcelona Activa.

The same space became a place for meeting and exchange between municipal specialists in various areas, such as energy, water, green spaces and mobility, and the different visitors at the congress looking to get a closer look at some of the projects they promote. Over 50 informal meetings took place in all.

Showcase for Barcelona entrepreneurship

The municipal stand also had a space for ten companies selected by Barcelona Activa to present their projects at the congress. These were start-ups with tech solutions for improving people’s quality of life, environmental quality, safety and competitiveness. Between them these companies have 115 workers and turn over a total of 88 million euros.

They included Wavecontrol, which designs and develops professional instruments for measuring, controlling and assessing human exposure to electromagnetic fields; Sensotran, which makes detection systems to measure harmful gases, and Foot Analytics, which optimises and monitors the occupation of jobs with the goal of saving costs, optimising space and becoming more sustainable.

Participating in the design of tomorrow’s cities

Barcelona City Council actively took part in the Smart City Expo’s parallel congress entitled ‘Tomorrow. Mobility World Congress’, which has the goal of promoting the acceleration of sustainable and smart urban mobility. In this space, and within the framework of Barcelona Innova Lab Mobility, two new challenges were presented that will be launched early in 2025 to find innovative solutions in the sphere of noise reduction and urban goods distribution, and an assessment was made of the initiatives and pilot projects under way in connection with the challenge to improve the city’s bus network, in collaboration with Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB). One example is the prototype by the Canadian company Buspas, offering real-time information on the bus network in order to enhance user experience.