The city of Utrecht is the Dutch frontrunner in car sharing. In early October 2018, the city signed a Green Deal to further accelerate shared mobility progress. With the Green Deal a broad coalition of 40 stakeholders agreed to an ambitious target: three years from now, in 2021, the Netherlands should host 100.000 shared cars and 700.000 users of car sharing platforms.
Métropole Nice Côte d’Azur, with approximately 540,000 inhabitants, is one of the frontrunners of Europe in terms of smart strategies and urban digital transformation. We caught up with Jean-Charles Maleysson to talk about their role as a lighthouse city for the IRIS Smart Cities project.
This autumn, the city of Utrecht will be home to the international Climate Planet Exhibition. From 6 October to 3 November a 24-meter-high globe will tower above the Utrecht Jaarbeursplein, attracting an estimated 70.000 visitors to create awareness and debate over climate change. A circle of containers surrounds the globe, portraying the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This autumn Gothenburg has the opportunity to be named Europe's Innovation Capital 2018 by the European Commission. The city's focus on test beds and Science Parks, where broad collaborations pave the way for new innovations, has qualified it as one of twelve finalists in the iCapital Award competition. Next week, several of the city's innovation initiatives will be presented in Brussels 10 October and the winner crowned in Lisbon on 6 November.
France’s premier business media, BFM, recognised the constantly evolving and innovative urban landscapes at an awards ceremony in Paris this September.
Riksbyggen, Västtrafik and EC2B are testing a new digital service that will make it easier for people to combine different modes of transport, such as bicycle, car pool and public transport. The test is done in Riksbyggen’s housing society, Brf Viva, which is currently being completed in Gothenburg.
Over the past few months a representative group of residents in the Utrecht district Kanaleneiland-Zuid has teamed up to start the process of co-creation of innovations, in the context of the IRIS project
Dr Willem-Jan Renger, head of the Innovation Studio at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht, is driving citizen engagement in smart city planning using methods generally seen in computer game creation, as part of an international consortium of cities, IRIS.
IRIS Smart Cities partner Municipality of Alexandroupolis has been identified by the Euro-China Green & Smart City Awards committee as one of a select group of innovative urban centers meriting international recognition. Alexandroupolis will be awarded a prize for its efforts in the fields of energy efficiency, renewable energy and smart public policies at the prestigious event in Ningbo, China, 6-9 September 2018.
For five days between the 20-24 June 2018, the City of Amsterdam hosted one of the largest urban festivals in Europe. WeMakeThe.City was dedicated to a more collaborative and connected approach to ‘making cities better’ featuring 600 speakers and 30,000 participants over five days. Urbanist and researcher Namita Kambli was a roving reporter for IRIS on site.