How cities are using cutting-edge technologies to lead their green, digital and socially responsible recovery
The last on-line event of the URBAN Intergroup on March 26th was dedicated to the presentation of the Intelligent City Challenge (ICC) by the European Commission.
Jan Olbrycht, President of the URBAN Intergroup, who opened the event, underlined that the digital world became a part of our daily life, because of the current pandemic situation.. He stressed that we will witness in the future how cities adapt to new challenges and new ways of functioning. Valentina Superti, Director at the European Commission’s DG for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, presented the Intelligent Cities Challenge journey in her introduction speech. The aim of this initiative is to speed up the digital and green transformation and resilience of the local economy with strategic policy interventions.
The Strategic Policy Forum on Digital Transformation, the first phase of the project, ended up with the Digital Cities Challenge of 40 cities. Currently, the project in its second phase supports community of 136 smaller European and international cities from 21 countries using cutting-edge technologies to lead their green, digital and socially responsible recovery. The Intelligent City Challenge (ICC) is not only EU-focused as 11 non-EU cities are part of it.
The ICC focuses on 5 thematic priorities, which are in line with the world’s biggest challenges and the key policy priorities of the Commission: Green economy and Local Green Deals; Green and Digital transition in Tourism; Citizen engagement
and digitisation of public administration; Supply chains, logistics and the economics of mobility; Upskilling and Reskilling. (more…)
9th Direct Dialogue between EU capital city mayors and the European Commission
Jan Olbrycht, as President of the URBAN Intergroup, attended the 9th Direct Dialogue between EU capital city mayors and the European Commission on March 18th. Upon the invitation of Jelena Pavičić Vukičević, Acting Mayor of Zagreb, Jan Olbrycht had opportunity to discuss issues linked to the National Recovery Plans and the future of the Urban Agenda for the EU. Jan Olbrycht called on EU Cohesion and Reform Commissioner Elisa Ferreira to look at the consultation process for National Recovery Plans in all member states. He asked to check whether local and regional authorities participated in the consultation process and whether they would be involved in implementing the investment. Moreover, referring to the future of the Urban Agenda, he stressed that the good example of multilevel governance in the Urban Agenda partnerships should be continue in the future.
The Direct Dialogue between EU capital city mayors and the European Commission is an initiative launched in 2013 by former EU Commissioner for Regional Policy, Johannes Hahn, to gather all the mayors of EU capital cities to discuss with EU commission the role that capitals can play in achieving EU objectives.
