{"id":1884,"date":"2018-02-16T09:12:39","date_gmt":"2018-02-16T09:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pgawards.wpengine.com\/?p=1884"},"modified":"2024-09-18T12:41:15","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T05:41:15","slug":"5-minutes-with-a-barcelona-smart-city-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asiapropertyawards.com\/en\/5-minutes-with-a-barcelona-smart-city-expert\/","title":{"rendered":"5 minutes with a Barcelona smart city expert"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1885\" src=\"http:\/\/pgawards.wpengine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Aberto-Martin.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1080\" height=\"720\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.asiapropertyawards.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Aberto-Martin.jpg 1080w, https:\/\/www.asiapropertyawards.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Aberto-Martin-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.asiapropertyawards.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Aberto-Martin-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.asiapropertyawards.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Aberto-Martin-1024x683.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1080px) 100vw, 1080px\" \/>Cities all over the world are opening up to the vast potential of\u00a0smart technologies and what they can do for urban efficiency, sustainability, and the happiness of\u00a0people living there.<\/p>\n<p>While general consensus is that\u00a0Singapore\u00a0leads the way in this respect in Asia, in Europe, there are several contenders for the smart crown, one of which is certainly Barcelona. The Spanish metropolis has long held a reputation for being a pioneer of urban digital innovation, manifested partly due to its hosting of the world renowned\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.smartcityexpo.com\/en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Smart City\u00a0Expo World Congress<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Property Report spent the day at\u00a0District Summit 2018\u00a0in Bangkok this week and caught up with speaker Alberto Mart\u00edn Torras of the Smart City\u00a0Expo World Congress.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What makes Barcelona smart city unique?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I think it\u2019s probably the fact that we take a holistic approach. There are many cities around the world that claim to be smart but tend to have a narrower view of what this means. Our smart city strategy aims to be global and considers all aspects of city life, including mobility, governance, sustainability and engaging citizens. I think that\u2019s what sets us apart.<\/p>\n<p><strong>You mentioned in your presentation today that you are not a fan of smart cities being built from scratch, can you explain why?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For a city to develop it takes time. A lot of the cities in Europe have centuries of history behind them and that\u2019s what has given them personality and identity. Developing a city from scratch is unrealistic and these projects will always be missing something.<\/p>\n<p>To an extent new districts are inevitable \u2013 cities grow and sometimes need to accommodate massive amounts of incoming people, so there may\u00a0not always be time to let the soul of a place develop. There is a threat that we could end up with a lot of bland places, but\u00a0as usual it\u2019s about finding the right balance.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Are there any smart initiatives that Barcelona tried to roll out, but failed?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We talk a lot about engaging citizens and giving them a voice and in the past Barcelona was very proactive in organizing polls for people to vote. That didn\u2019t work well in the early stages, I guess because it was so pioneering we hadn\u2019t quite thought of everything, so there\u2019s some work to do in that area.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What is your biggest ambition for Barcelona as a smart city?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We use a lot of big words sometimes in this industry, but at the end of the day the work we do is about ensuring people have a good life. The claim we\u2019re using at this year\u2019s Smart Cities Expo World Congress is \u2018cities to live in\u2019, so our biggest ambition is for Barcelona to be a nice place to live. It\u2019s as simple as that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alberto Mart\u00edn Torras of the Smart City Expo World Congress talks history, citizen engagement and creating a nice place to live<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","news_country-rest-of-the-world","news_author-pippa-woodhead"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>5 minutes with a Barcelona smart city expert | Asia Property Awards<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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