More than half of the human population today lives in urban areas even though cities produce 60 % of greenhouse gas emissions. To make cities more sustainable and inclusive, urbanists have developed smart cities strategies. At an event of the European Week of the Regions and the Cities, four innovators showed how they are overcoming challenges, like the lack of financing and citizens’ support, while implementing smart initiatives.
By Valeria Pavlenko (Edited by Dinah Ahl)
Every urban area has its unique infrastructure and special needs, which is considered in creating a smart strategy for a specific city. At the participatory lab Positive Energy Districts as Innovation Ecosystems for climate-neutrality: customized Connections - Competence - Capital four representatives of smart cities projects from Parma (Italy), Bydgoszcz (Poland), Lviv (Ukraine) and Vaasa (Finland) shared their experience in applying smart cities strategies.
One of the areas that implement a smart strategy is the Ukrainian city Lviv. A city still at the beginning of the path to becoming a sustainable and well-developed urban area.
Why does Lviv need a smart city strategy?
The city of Lviv is famous for its architecture and coffee culture but it is also becoming the Ukrainian IT capital. GlobalLogic research shows that from 2018 the Lviv IT sector created 14 thousand workplaces and is now the employer of 77 thousand workers. Smart city initiatives are therefore crucial to create suitable conditions for this rapidly developing sector.
Lviv is the biggest city in western Ukraine with a nine hundred years old history and with most of the workplaces located downtown. Still, The Positive Energy Districts event spokesperson, Maksym Terletskiy from Lviv, noted that a lot of citizens live in the suburbs, taking their private transport to work and therefore creating traffic and problems with pollution. Leading to the discussion of the importance of implementing an urban mobility project so the citizens can move around the city freely.
Dealing with the challenges
At the Positive Energy Districts as Innovation Ecosystems for climate-neutrality event, implementers of the smart city concepts described the problems they are facing. The most obvious one is the lack of financing. Lviv has been facing budget losses for many years, leading to the city administration being very selective when it comes to financing new projects. Spokesperson Cristina Pellegrini from Parma noted that her city has the same problem too.
To solve that problem Christina Pellegrini recommended engaging and building strong relationships with local and regional stakeholders, collaborating with both big and small enterprises, and working with funds that can finance sustainable actions.
Another challenge that both Lviv and Bydgoszcz are facing is social acceptance caused by low citizens’ and businesses` awareness about climate change and climate-neutral urban development. To solve that problem spokesperson Maksym Terletskiy suggested communicating clearly with citizens and using well-known practices. Natalia Majewska from Bydgoszcz recommended building connections with the city's universities, enterprises, and civil society organizations to cooperate and communicate closely.
The other big problem facing the cities was the COVID-19 pandemic. Maksym Terletskiy pointed out the massive challenge for Lviv. The city started to implement smart urban initiatives in 2019, just before the pandemic began, but Terletskiy proposed not wasting “a good crisis”, because it can expose the city's most urgent problems that need to be changed.
The other general recommendation that Natalia Majewska suggested was participating in EU programs and not working in silos. Maksym Terletskiy had the same recommendation and he added that working with international organizations “can bring investments, but also build local knowledge”. And when the projects are bringing results, Mika Hakosalo from Vaasa proposed using saved money to invest in other city development strategies.
Implementing a smart city strategy can be challenging, especially during a pandemic but the experiences of Parma, Bydgoszcz, and Vaasa show that it's not impossible. Positive Energy Districts as Innovation Ecosystems for climate-neutrality event showed how to overcome many problems. Lviv is only starting to bring smart city projects to life so more challenges are still on the way. But using other smart cities’ examples on resolving those problems, utilizing connections and own experience can help Lviv and other urban areas be more sustainable and accessible for everyone.
