#connectedinEurope at MPSC regional conference in Freiburg

Within Germany’s funding programme for Model Projects Smart Cities (MPSC), several regional conferences take place each year. The aim is to bring together geographically proximate cities to exchange on their approaches and the progress of their projects and solutions. It is not least an opportunity for non-funded local municipalities to gain access to the ecosystem of the German model projects, advance their own smart city ambitions and build connections with like-minded partners. 

For the regional conference in October 2024 in Freiburg, the host city decided to include a decidedly international perspective, given that Freiburg and the region is strongly embedded in the cross-border region with France and Switzerland. This also shows in their smart city projects, notably in the trilateral project with Basel and Mulhouse to build a joint data space (Triregio Data Space) which emerged in the context of the #connectedinEurope programme.

Staff members of the International Smart Cities Network (ISCN), who were in charge of implementing #connectedinEurope, joined the panel of the conference to share experiences from the peer-exchanges and tandem projects. Together with Freiburg they also hosted a special workshop on how to enhance smart city projects by integrating and connecting them regionally or even internationally. Workshop participants focussed on the question of how smart city projects can be enhanced when including data and extending applications for beyond the own urban precincts, e.g. through data sharing.
 

The core question: How do smart city projects get elevated when their data input and applications go beyond their own urban precincts? 
 

Also, local administrations hold relatively many data on certain municipal sectors themselves, while on others they hold relatively few, therefore rendering empirical policy-approaches more difficult and implying the need for shared data, e.g. through data spaces. Fig. 2 shows the percentage of respondents in the workshop who reported that their local administration holds relatively many data for a given sector. (Multiple mentioning was possible.)

In the last section of the workshop, people came together in smaller groups to brainstorm which of the previously mentioned data in municipal sectors could be leveraged for regionally and internationally integrated solutions. Ideas ranged from more precise balancing of climate emissions, to benchmarking of energy usages, stackings of mobility services or early integration of proximate development plans in the region.

The end note was a clear conviction that - like for analogue life in the regions of Europe -  the development of common good-oriented smart cities happens in relation to the (international) neighbour and can be enhanced through better linking with it.