Gruppenfoto ISCN Event SCCON

ISCN-Event at SCCON: Exchange on UN-Habitat’s International Guidelines on People-Centred Smart Cities

The International Smart Cities Network (ISCN) hosted an event on UN-Habitat’s International Guidelines on People-Centred Smart Cities at the Smart Country Convention in Berlin. The exchange encouraged municipal decision makers to assess their efforts taken in developing their towns and villages into smart cities in the light of the UN-Habitat Smart City Guidelines.

10/17/2024

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Open Online Consultation

The Open Online consultation for the International Guidelines on People-Centred Smart Cities is open until 17 November for review of stakeholders and can be accessed here: 

International Guidelines on People-Centred Smart Cities: Open Online consultation

UN-Habitat is currently developing guidelines on people-centred smart cities. They will be a global non-binding framework to guide the development of national and local smart city regulations, plans, and strategies. This will ensure that digital urban infrastructure and data contribute to making cities and human settlements sustainable, inclusive, and prosperous and respectful of human rights.


These efforts were a great opportunity to share vision and ideas on issues that are essential to developing futureproof settlements on a global level. The International Smart Cities Network (ISCN) hosted an event at the Smart Country Convention in Berlin, encouraging municipal decision makers to assess their efforts taken in developing their towns and villages into smart cities in the light of the UN-Habitat Smart City Guidelines. 


Renate Mitterhuber, Head of Division Smart Cities and Regions, emphasized in her welcome address the need for globally applicable strategies for towns, cities, and regions to boost digitalization.
 

We need to translate the technical concepts by experts and professionals into non-specialists‘ concepts and language so citizens can better understand and dig deep into context.

(Renate Mitterhuber)

In the context of Smart Cities and urban development policy, UN-Habitat focuses on harnessing technology, data and innovation to address people’s need. Milou Jansen, the Project Coordinator for the International Guidelines on People-Centred Smart Cities at UN-Habitat, gave the audience insights into the current work of UN-Habitat and its approach to people-centred smart cities. The main goal of the guidelines is to steer the potential of urban digitalization in the right way, towards supporting the wellbeing and livelihoods of people. She further addressed the importance of consulting experts from different countries and cities and invited the audience to participate in the consultative process that is currently running until mid-November 2024. The guidelines will be finalized and published in Q1/2025. 

Presentation on UN-Habitat process for Guidelines on People-Centred Smart Cities

Year of publication: 2024
Download PDF (3.12 MB)

Karen Laßmann, Head of Smart City and Data Management, Senate Chancellery, Berlin, shared her perspective as German Member of the UN-Habitat Expert Working Group and presented the participatory process leading to Berlin’s Smart City strategy “Digital together”. She pointed out the importance of centering citizens in smart city development. Therefore, a focus of the process was to integrate non-organized citizens, so-called silent groups in the process, in addition to other stakeholder groups such as academia, the organized civil society, administration and the private sector. She also talked about the need for improvement and innovation in public administration, for example in the communication between different government levels, working across departments and levels, and prototyping solutions. 

After the inputs from the UN-Habitat experts, municipal representative shared their views on designated focus areas of the guidelines. The ISCN and #connectedinEurope partner cities Arnsberg (DE), Arezzo (IT), and Hamm (DE) reflected on the potential implementation of the guidelines at the local level in the field of environment, digital literacy and participation. 

Anna Sophie Herken, Managing Director of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, closed the event with a keynote on Germany’s international approach and the importance of European and global coordination. She highlighted the relevance of smart cities in terms of sheer market volume, but, equally importantly, for the sustainable and inclusive development of cities. In an illustrative example, she showed the potential of digital technologies: 9 out of 10 mayors in cities around the world want to engage with AI, but currently only 2 per cent are doing so. Harnessing technologies such as AI is necessary for the resource-efficient development of our cities, but it is important to ensure that AI models are inclusive and non-discriminatory. 
Designing people-centred policies at a local level, and scaling them, is one of the top priorities of GIZ as well, and therefore well aligned with the goals of UN -Habitat and its guideline process.

 

This article will be updated with more details and a recording of the event soon!