Portraits of the World's Smart Cities

Certain smart cities around the world are leading by example. By examining the strategies that are delivering the highest impact, these best practices can be more widely adopted to replicate their success.

This city portrait is in two parts. The first part (Alba Iulia Smart City: How Central Romania Quietly Created a Hidden Champion in Europe) described the ambitious plans of the Alba Iulia City Hall as it uses tourism and strong partnerships with private companies to transform Alba Iulia into Romania’s first smart city. This second part takes a closer look at some of the smart solutions being implemented there.

Organizing Alba Iulia’s Transformation

The municipal administration of Alba Iulia – a city of around 74,000 in Transylvania, central Romania – was announced in march to be a finalist in the country’s ‘Business Review Awards 2018’ for its efforts in transforming Alba County’s capital into Romania’s first smart city.^[1] As Romania’s centenary celebrations approach, the city that formed the historical backdrop to its Great Union will complete the first part of its ambitious plans, having developed, tested or indeed fully implemented over 100 smart solutions.

Certain smart cities around the world are leading by example. By examining the solutions that are delivering the highest impact, these best practices can be more widely adopted to replicate their success. This smart city portrait provides an overview on the smart city approach and intelligent solutions implemented in the Dutch City of Eindhoven. For its achievements, especially in regards to open innovation, the City of Eindhoven was named the "Intelligent Community of the Year 2011" by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF).

Eindhoven’s Smart City Strategy

Together with Manchester (UK) and Stavanger (Norway), Eindhoven is acting as a ‘Lighthouse City’ for the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Triangulum project,[1] seeking to drive smart city innovations globally by demonstrating real solutions that are smart, sustainable, and inclusive. The project places a focus on the areas of energy use and CO₂ emissions, open data and data infrastructure, sustainable and affordable housing, and the proliferation of joint-ownership in projects, engaging and empowering the citizens to take greater roles in the ongoing development of their living and working spaces.

Certain smart cities around the world are leading by example. By examining the solutions that are delivering the highest impact, these best practices can be more widely adopted to replicate their success. This smart city portrait provides an overview on the smart city strategy and intelligent solutions implemented in the City of Barcelona.

Barcelona’s Smart City Strategy

Barcelona is no newcomer to the smart city scene. In 2011 it launched a project designed to make the city more innovative, listing the sustainability of energy use and of mobility, open data initiatives, flexible smart services and social initiatives as key areas for development, and it encouraged connections among researchers in both the public and private sectors with a focus on these topics.

One major early step for Barcelona was to establish new technological infrastructure on a massive scale to support and improve upon the city’s services. It created citywide networks of different types of sensors, providing real-time feedback on everything from air quality to noise, energy and waste management. Coupled with free WiFi around the city, this new level of connectivity and data collection allowed Barcelona to become a testbed for smart projects driven by the Internet of Things.

Barcelona was officially recognized as a smart city back in 2014 by the European Commission, taking the very first European Capital of Innovation prize for "introducing the use of new technologies to bring the city closer to citizens".^[1] The city had indeed pursued the application of technology to generate smart solutions for the problems most relevant to its citizens – but with mixed results.