Citizen laboratories will shape the smart cities of the future. Smart cities need engaged citizens to help build and test new technologies through citizen-driven projects. Citilab in Cornellà de Llobregat, Spain is an example of a citizen laboratory, where over 5,000 members and 50 employees collaborate on projects around senior citizens, music, education, and job creation to test innovations and shape their city as an open living lab. These citizen laboratories allow residents to co-create their city infrastructure and new technologies through real-world experimentation and community engagement.

1. Citizen laboratories:
Smart cities of the future.
Artur Serra
Citilab
Nov. 30th, 2011
Smart Cities Expo, Barcelona

2. “Les maisons font la ville,
... les citoyens font la cité”
(Rousseau)
(Contrat social, I, vi, note *, OC III[1], p. 361)

3. Smart City,
a necessary new infrastructure

4. Smart cities
need
smart citizens...
or not?

6. Smart cities
will become
citizens labs

7. Citilab: a Citizen lab

8. Citilab of
Cornellà de Llobregat,
an initial experiment
on cities as citizens labs.

10. What a living lab is about?
Living Labs are citizen-driven open innovation
ecosystems in real-life settings in which
innovation is fully integrated in the co-
creative co-design processes for new
technologies, products, services, and
societal infrastructures.”.
(EnoLL PPP Strategic Innovation Ecosystems and Enabling
Actions for Addressing Societal Challenges and Improving
European Competitiveness
Phase I: Towards the 2020 Horizon

11. st
1 step: Forming a PPPP
Amb el suport

12. 2nd: Engaging a local community
5000 members, 50 workers

13. rd
3 Learning by projects

14. Seniorlab

16. Digital Storytelling
against school drop-out

17. MUSICLab
For young
musicians

18. Edutec:
Learning to innovate

19. Invent your job!
From curriculum to “projectum”

20. Briefly
1. Smart City can be the infrastructure of the new
city.
2. The Smart City, as any other city, needs
citizens,smart citizens... although some people
still don't believe it.
3. As Citilab is showing, smart citizens are
begining to organize its city as an open
laboratory plenty of projects, activities, business,
new cultural life, new opportunities...

21. Thanks a lot.
Artur Serra
artur.serra@i2cat.net