Now Namur, once labeling itself as a “digital gateway,” is looking to earn another title: smart city. A new project in the historic centre is operating as a “living lab,” where citizens can gather and collaborate on creative projects. Here are a few of the ways Namur is working toward a sustainable revolution in the region, one solution at a time.
San Sebastian is a growing city (circa 200,000 inhabitants) in the Basque Country, Spain. At the heart of one of the Iberian peninsula’s most entrepreneurial and industrialised regions, the resort city has embarked on an ambitious Smart City programme to safeguard its unique heritage and increase efficiency for its people.
Trash management is an issuing authority constantly face as cities strive to keep their streets clean. Switzerland is known for being “stereotypically tidy,” but cities still have to determine how much time—and where—to invest in sanitation. A new digital system that counts and categorizes trash may help solve urban sanitation issues throughout Switzerland.
Looking for a way to improve city infrastructure while reducing air pollution? Carsharing may be the solution. Smart Car sharing companies like Germany-based car2go are not only removing up to 11 vehicles for every car used, they're also saving up to 14 metric tonnes of greenhouse gases per vehicle. Germany alone has built up a smart car customer base of over 1 million people since car2go launched back in 2009.
The Czech Republic’s second-largest city, Brno, sits in the center of the South Moravian Region and is home to nearly 400,000 inhabitants. With a prime position in Central Europe between the forested Bohemian-Moravian highlands and South Moravia lowlands, Brno offers both a beautiful natural environment, as well as an excellent infrastructure for business.
Santander, the capital of Spain’s autonomous region on the northern coast of Spain, was once home to a royal summer residence and still seeks to showcase this “aristocratic atmosphere” while providing visitors and citizens with another view: waste-free streets. Below, we’ll take a look at how this summer tourist destination is getting savvy when it comes to strengthening its waste collection services, making it a more liveable city and inspiring leader for the rest of Spain to follow.
The Slovak capital is now looking to improve energy efficiency with a pilot project revolving around nearly zero energy building renovation models. Not only does the city want to reduce energy consumption, it wants to build a sustainable environment in which buildings are interconnected with public space, green areas and sustainable mobility, such as mass public transport.
The historic city of Helmond in North Brabant in the southern Netherlands was one of the first cities to adopt intelligent lighting technology as a way to solve its challenges as a growing industrial hub, becoming more sustainable in the process by saving energy. Let’s dive deeper into why this Dutch city decided to become a pioneer in the intelligent street lighting movement and some of the immediate benefits they’ve seen in the process.
Europe’s third-smallest state, San Marino, is poised to be the first in the continent to roll out a 5G network. The 61-square-kilometer microstate, encompassed by Italy, will serve as a living lab for the network’s services, launching public safety systems, digital tourism initiatives, and smart city deployments
Ten medium-sized European cities—including Bruges, Delft and Mechelen—have partnered up with Cambridge Cleantech to develop solutions for urban environment challenges revolving around one main concept: open data. Here’s how these cities are looking at public service information in a new way, tapping into a market estimated to have a €300 billion value to tackle issues from parking to air quality.