Smart Cities which empower citizens

Smart Cities are modern and interesting. But they are much more than that. They are the promise to convert cities into intelligent and efficient ones. Cities that “think” and improve our lives and make the world more sustainable. In Barcelona there are many examples how this concept can help its citizens. At our event we want to see if there are also examples who empower its citizens.

Do Smart cities empower us to design our city or do we have to wait until elections in order to be asked how we want our city to be designed? That is the question we addressed in this event.

The talk (19:00-19:30)
We started the event showing the TED talk (in english with spanish subtitles) from Alessandra Orofino. In her talk, Alessandra claims that people feel excluded from politics. She explains us how it is possible to change that, to convert a city into a smart one using a mix of tech and old-fashioned human connection. Technology can empower us so that we stop being ignored by politicians in their own city. Sharing examples from her hometown of Rio, she says: “It is up to us to decide whether we want schools or parking lots, recycling projects or construction sites, cars or buses, loneliness or solidarity.”

And Barcelona? (19:45-20:15)
Then, we talked about examples we have here in Barcelona and which empower us to decide over the design of our city. Ricard Espelt from apps4citizens , a real expert in this field, presented us various initiatives and tools.

The tools which exist here in Barcelona right now for us are:
Go-Innovació: Platform offered by the city council to propose ideas to change the city of Barcelona.
Citycise: Portal to propose ideas to improve the city, vote and comment. (private initiative)
Smart Citizen: Citizens report incidents and crowd-monitor various environmental indicators.
El teu parlament: Control and transparency of parlament’s activity.
L’H Ben Net: Citizens can report urban incidents to the city council.
Vincles: Social network to improve the social situation of lonely elderly people.
We Go BCN: Activity plans according to your interests.

Soon to be realized:
Valora BCN: Citizens inform about the costs of urban space in Barcelona.

The discussion (20:15-20:30)
Afterwards, and moderated by Ricard Espelt we had an interesting discussion about smart cities, the future of democracy and the power technology gives us. All attendees could ask questions and express their opinions, contributing thus to our discussion.

Networking (20:30-21:30)
As always, after the discussion we had the possibility to do networking enjoying drinks and tapas for all (included in the ticket price).

Photos of the event:

About TEDxBarcelonaSalon
At our TEDxBarcelonaSalon events we foster networking, dialog and the discussion among all members of TEDxBarcelona. In order to achieve this we meet once a month and listen to an interesting talk. After watching the talk we discuss about the presented subject. Here the list of past Salon events.