IPWEA, with the support of ASCA, SCCANZ and Austrade, recently led a delegation to the 2018 Smart Cities Expo World Congress in Barcelona. This event, by far the largest of its kind in the world, brought together more than 20,000 leaders in the smart cities space, along with more than 800 exhibitors and hundreds of speakers from around the world.

Based on feedback from tour participants and some of the best presentations and meetings held, here six recurring smart city themes from Barcelona:

1. Articulate where your community is headed

A successful smart city needs an ambitious long-term strategy articulating what it wants to achieve in the future to make its community a better place. To build support, it then needs to implement projects that deliver demonstrable short-term wins consistent with that strategy.

2. Transformational change relies on superb communications

More than most changes delivered by government, a successful smart city requires an excellent internal and external communications strategy because of the transformational nature of the changes that smart cities usher in.

3. Senior champions needed

A successful smart city requires a senior champion to regularly, loudly and enthusiastically communicate its strategy internally and externally so that everyone understands the benefits. 

4. Governance reform

Again and again, the message was clear that a successful smart city requires fundamentally new approaches to governance that allows for innovative collaboration with suppliers and a more open, inclusive and participatory relationship with community. Indeed, the need for fundamentally new procurement approaches that allow for co-development of initiatives and longer-term partnerships was a recurring priority across many countries. And, the need to put respect for personal privacy at the heart of every community’s strategy and governance approach to smart cities was also a common theme.

5. Mobility, energy and data

In terms of the projects being discussed and implemented, urban mobility, energy usage and successfully managing data were consistently at the top of the list. As leading advisor Josep-Ramon Ferrer Escoda, International Director of DOXA and former CIO Barcelona City Council, said to the delegation at a briefing before the congress, “Our increasingly urban society has no option but to become dramatically more efficient in how it uses all forms of resources”.

6. It’s about the people, not the technology

A successful smart city must, above all else, use technology to solve real problems and facilitate a better community. While the array of smart city technology available is dazzling (and only set to accelerate as 5G comes to fruition), deploying technology is not the goal just the enabler. Improving people’s lives is the goal and must never be forgotten when pursuing a smarter city.

Speaking after the event, Graham Mawer, one of the delegation organisers and Director of Next Energy, said: “One of the most important take-aways for me was that Australian and New Zealand local governments are not as far behind our overseas counterparts as many imagine. We could well be though if we don’t get the transition underway here soon. The global leaders are clearly doing a lot that we can learn from." 

"However, nobody has got the whole thing cracked yet and not everything being done elsewhere in the world applies to ANZ. We must define what being a smart city means for each of our communities, make it our own and get on with it.”  

If you have questions about how smart city technology can benefit your community, you can't afford to miss the 4th International Street Lighting + Smart Controls Conference at the International Convention Centre Sydney, 2-4 April 2019. Find out more.