Charles Landry | 16-04-2014

1. The European City of Innovation
Charles Landry | 16-04-2014
There were 58 applications for the award, 20 shortlisted cities and 6 finalists.
Cities had to show concrete results of projects started since 2010 as well as a track record of
innovation and most importantly an interconnected innovation eco-system approach.
The criteria for the award were places seen as:
- Innovative – shown in both processes and the impact
- Inclusive – illustrating citizen involvement and engagement
- Inspiring – by attracting talent, funding, investment and partners
- Interactive – encouraging open communication between key players
- Integrated – maximising a holistic viewpoint involving people and place
A number of themes emerged:
- Several highlighted evidence of their quadruple helix approach – the link between
universities, the public and private sectors and citizens’ involvement, which was a pre-
condition to win the prize.
- Many proposal highlighted open data applications, but initiatives focusing on these
alone were not deemed to be systemic even though several involved cities throwing out
calls for proposals which were taken up by start-ups, SMEs or enthusiasts to develop
apps. Open data is now regarded as becoming mainstream.
- There were various examples of participative crowd-sourcing schemes to generate ideas
to find solutions to urban problems ranging from crime prevention, to energy saving to
dealing with traffic problems. For instance applications to find available car parking
spaces since a large proportion of congestion is people looking for parking spaces.
- The energy transition was a strong theme with a number of cities using incentives and
regulations in imaginative ways and with determined goals to do better than mandated
reduction targets.
- some reconceptualised complete systems in the city such as structural reform in health,
which empowers citizens to manage and maintain their own health and wellbeing with
the help of ICT, tools. The solutions seek to deliver an advanced, personalized,
connected health service based on open systems and open collaboration where the

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ownership, development and management is distributed, without any one stakeholder
holding a monopoly position.
- Model urban development schemes were put forward mostly to act as inspiration for
overall city development so becoming ‘living labs’. These typically combined
incentives to develop the creative economy, eco-city thinking, new forms of mobility
and co-creation.
- Cities often threw out problem solving challenges to established private companies and
the world of SMEs allowing them to use the city as a test bed for innovations. This has
helped many companies to prototype inventions and to use the city brand as a marketing
tool.
The winner was Barcelona and the runners up Grenoble and Groningen. The finalists in
alphabetical order were:
- Barcelona was nominated for introducing the use of ‘new technologies to bring the city
closer to citizens’ emphasizing ‘technology for people’. This scheme took the ‘smart
city’ notion much further with significant applications in public health and social
services. Most applications were co-created with citizen groups and business. It also
highlighted its plans to become ‘mobile world capital’ by 2018, its global networking
and focus on sharing its results with other cities.
- Espoo part of the Helsinki city region was chosen for creating a strategic partnership
uniting science, business and artistic creativity. The location of both Nokia and the new
major game companies Rovio (Angry Birds) and Supercell (The Clash of Clans) brings
these elements together naturally as does Aalto University, a unique merger of an art
and design university with one focusing on science and technology and a business
school.
- Grenoble was selected for investing in scientific and technological breakthroughs
through synergies between public and private research, education initiatives and
industrial collaboration. Close to the Alps its innovation eco-system was built up
starting from hydro-electrics and then migrating over the years towards a global role in
micro-electronics. Its main current project is to develop a carbon neutral ‘universal city’
around a 250ha site that should act as a model of combining SMEs, research and new
forms of living.
- Groningen was elected for using new concepts, tools and processes to develop a user-
centred smart energy ecosystem. Called the ‘smart energy citizen’ the aim is to shift the

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power in energy markets from large energy providers to groups of citizens. Helped by
global crowd engineering with Groningen as the trialling ground and energy
competitions to find solutions it seeks to become a benchmark city. Imaginative
communications is used to foster behaviour change such as heat maps for the whole city
to show where and how much energy is used.
- Malaga was proposed for its new urban regeneration model combining an open lab, new
forms of mobility (electric cars) in the development of Soho Malaga where artists and
creative industries people redesign an area of the city. It highlights a mixed generation
approach and especially a scheme for children to act as mediators in solving difficult
urban problems such as segregation.
- Paris became a finalist by opening up municipally-owned property (streets, gardens,
buildings, basements, schools) to experimental innovative solutions, driven by all types
of business where innovations were often encouraged by thematic calls for proposals.
They start from the premise that the sum of collective intelligence outside an
organisation is always greater than the knowledge within and that by opening out and
exchanging information this collective intelligence can be channelled.
Two interesting issues emerged from all finalists. First they stated that the biggest obstacle to
change was their own municipal institutions and the need to overcome the silo mentality.
Second, they stressed the difficulties in achieving real collaboration and connectivity between
the various players in order to benefit from networking.
Consultado em: 04-fev-2015 16:13
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