In the first two days of April the Nordic Smart City Network was united in the capital of Iceland. This meeting created space to explore collaborative smart city solutions and future projects within the network. But it was also an opportunity to learn from each other’s strategies and involve the partners from Nordic Innovation and Climate KIC.
The 1th of April the Nordic Smart City Network had its third meeting; this time in Reykjavik, Iceland – after two prior meetings in Oslo, Norway, and Copenhagen, Denmark. 22 delegates from the Nordic countries were gathered to discuss the Nordic way of developing smart cities and to look for inspiration in the two-day meeting.
In the City Council Hall of Reykjavik, the network had the opportunity to catch up on the Living Lab projects that the cities in the network collaborate on. For example, Helsinki explained how Wayfinding is spreading from the lead city into the team cities.
Physically the hosts from City of Reykjavik brought their Living Lab project into the meeting by showing their Smart Bin. There were many takeaways and inspiration from the Living Lab presentations and discussion that can be useful for the cities both in present and coming smart city projects. One of the themes that was discussed at the meeting was finding the best practices of public-private collaboration and how the Nordic cities can create critical mass by joining forces e.g., when demanding specific requirements from tech companies like environmental or privacy issues.
Partners on hand
By having Nordic Innovation and Climate KIC at the meeting, the cities could discuss urban challenges and solutions within the Nordics with the experts from the foundations. One example of a concrete challenge for many of the participating cities right now electric kick-scooters placed in the big cities. As Bergen presented the development of their Living Lab, Mobility Hub, most cities had inputs on the issue of electric Kick-scooters.
But the cities were also attending to discuss the creation of new projects for sustainable urban development with topics such as: air pollution, CO2 neutrality and connectivity. Nordic Innovation also hosted a board game, facilitating discussions regarding the mobility issues of 2050 in Nordic cities.
Smart city knowledge sharing
At day two the cities had more opportunities to exchange knowledge and investigate the Nordic way of doing smart cities. Smart City governance is always an interesting and challenging issue. Therefore, Forum Virium Helsinki, Smart Tampere, Stavanger Smart City and Smart Aarhus represented their governance models and strategies. Representatives from the City of Reykjavik presented an impressive citizens involvement program that emerged after the financial crisis in the last decade. Also, Reykjavik presented their work of combining the cities strategies with relevant EU-programs to create more support from the city for EU-programs and EU-funding.
Finally, a future meeting at the Nordic Edge Expo from the 24th to the 26th of September in Stavanger was discussed. 2018 the NSCN was also present at Nordic Edge. The exact engagement in the Nordic Edge will be published on this website at a later date. Also new collaborative projects are in the making. Keep following the website to stay updated on the development.
The next meeting will be in the first week of September in Helsinki, Finland.
