Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC), the leading international event on cities and smart urban solutions organized by Fira de Barcelona will experience significant growth on its next edition. With still seven months to go, SCEWC has already booked as much space as on its last edition and is aiming at a 20% bigger event. Under the theme Cities Made of Dreams the show and congress will reflect on the transformation that metropolises have experienced in the past decade, how many solutions that seemed sheer daydreaming back then are now reality and how we have the tools turn more dreams into reality in the near future.
The congress program will be structured in 5 themes, Digital Transformation, Urban Environment, Mobility, Governance & Finance, and Inclusive & Sharing Cities; and will cover topics such as Data-driven Cities, 5G and the future of Connectivity, Resilient Cities, Gentrification, Innovative Transport Systems, Multilevel Governance, Sharing and Collaborative Economy, Circular Economy and Cities for All. In 2019, the event will be jointly held with Smart Mobility Congress.
The event’s director, Ugo Valenti, said that “We have come a long way since 2011 and the smart city opportunity has turned into reality. Today we experiment the results of the work done. We’ve moved from small proof-of-concept projects to smart implementation at scale. New governance models and new approaches to equity and a circular economy have also emerged. Cities have become socio-economic and political actors on national and world stages and have a major impact on the development of nations. Yet we need to keep on exploring new paths, reinventing places and scenarios as we still have the opportunity and the duty to make things happen.”
SCEWC has already booked 85% of its floorspace and will spread over halls 1 and 2 of the Gran Via venue for the first time in its history breaking the previous record for ninth consecutive year. Among the 844 companies exhibiting at the 2018 edition who will return for the 2019 SCEWC are Bosch, Cisco, Deutsche Telekom, Engie, Huawei, Mastercard, Microsoft, Siemens and Suez. Likewise, many cities and countries will showcase their projects among which Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Dubai, Germany, Finland, Holland, Israel, South Korea, London, Moscow, New York, Norway, Prague, Sweden, and the United States.
An international benchmark
On its last edition, SCEWC gathered 700 cities worldwide as well as 844 exhibitors and over 400 speakers and 21,331 attendees from 146 countries. The international impact of the show has grown with regional events in Atlanta (USA), Curitiba (Brazil), Kyoto (Japan), Puebla (Mexico) and Buenos Aires (Argentina) further consolidating Smart City Expo as the international leading event in smart urbans solutions and drawing more attendees and interest toward the global event held in Barcelona every year.