The Smart City Expo expects to exceed 27,000 attendees to address "the future of cities"

BarcelonaThe fifteenth edition of the Smart City Expo World Congress, the congress dedicated to smart cities held in Barcelona, will bring together more than 27,000 attendees at Fira de Barcelona. This year's edition of the event will feature representatives from a thousand cities, with more than 1,200 exhibitors and around 600 international speakers. Under the slogan "Urban solutions, real impact", the Smart City Expo gathers in the country's capital personalities from the local world such as the former mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo; the mayor of Atlanta, Andre Dickens, and representatives from cities as diverse as Athens, Milan, or Dublin.

In addition to representatives from the municipal world from all over the planet, the Smart City Expo will bring to the pavilions of Fira de Barcelona executives from technology companies the size of Nvidia, Microsoft, or Dell Technologies, and will group together pavilions from countries such as Germany, the United States, Japan, or Mexico. The congress will be structured into seven thematic axes related to the main urban challenges: enabling technologies; energy and environment; mobility; governance and economy; life and inclusion; infrastructure and building, and blue economy.

The director of Smart City, Ugo Valenti, has assured that the organization expects "a little more" than last year's 27,000 attendees. "This is important, because the future of our cities is decided here," he argued. As Valenti has remarked, among the congress exhibitors they will address "the challenges and solutions that are transforming cities, from digitalization, AI, or green energy to efficient governance, sustainable urban development, social equity, and policies to overcome the housing crisis around the world".

Regulation "here to stay"

Within the framework of the Smart City, the new Housing World Summit congress is also being held, dedicated to affordable housing and organized by the Fira de Barcelona itself and the city council. At the inauguration of the event, the Deputy Mayor for Economy, Housing, Finance and Tourism, Jordi Valls, assured that "regulation is here to stay" within the residential sector. He also assured that, within the scope of the fair, issues such as "the construction ecosystem" will be addressed. "Today we want to build and we do not have enough staff, nor enough developers, nor enough financing," warned Valls.