Intelligent cities to meet citizen demands

In his inaugural speech of the Future in Spanish meeting, held in Santander to address the subject "Cities of the Future in Latin America and Spain", Guillermo Fernández de Soto, Director for Europe of CAF, Development Bank of Latin America, stated, "changing cities into intelligent-cities and better places to live is one of the main objectives of public managers worldwide", and added that "dialogues such as this gain an inevitable importance and serve as a starting point to seek innovative solutions to important challenge not only in Latin America but worldwide". 

This meeting of Future in Spanish, carried out in the Paraninfo de Las Llamas of the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo (UIMP) of the Cantabrian capital, started with the welcoming speech of César Nombela Cano, President of the  UIMP. This inauguration included the participation of Eva Díaz Tezanos, Vice-president of the Government of Cantabria;  Iñigo de la Serna, Mayor of Santander, and Ignacio Pérez, Director General of the Diario Montañés.

They all coincided in mentioning the need for a commitment from the politicians responsible for improving the cities in the different administrations. Guillermo Fernández de Soto underlined that "changing the cities into intelligent-cities and better places to live in is one of the main objectives of public managers worldwide. Its importance is such that it has become one of the seventeen Sustainable Development Objectives", and justified the need to reach this objective because "in coming years the world population will not only age, but it will also tend to settle in large cities. It is estimated that toward 2050, the world will have approximately 9.7 billion people, and with the exception of Africa and the Middle East, the economically active population will decrease as a result of its aging". 

For CAF's Director in Europe, this phenomena will "bring about a strong pressure on the politicians responsible for satisfying the increasing demands of citizens, in terms of housing and infrastructure, transportation, and an adequate provision of basic services". In this respect, he explained that "CAF has been working for the development of the program 'Cities with a Future' in Latin America , seeking to align financial support, technical assistance, development and efficient use of knowledge, and information to change Latin American cities into advanced and sustainable places, investing in: citizen security, infrastructure, productive transformation, inclusive urban development, environment, and information and communications technology". 

CAF's dedication

After the opening, José Carrera, Corporate Vice-president of Social Development at CAF, Development Bank of Latin America, made the first presentation called "Cities in Latin America: the challenges and opportunities of inclusive and intelligent models". In his presentation, he launched five essential messages: "building more inclusive cities aims to the core of Latin America's pending task: reduce social exclusion; inclusion is also at the heart of the World Urban Agenda; it is necessary to prioritize pro-inclusion policies with a comprehensive and territorial approach; knowledge and regional best practices must be recovered", adding "to advance more efficiently, it is necessary to use the tools offered by information and communications technology". 

CAF's Vice-president pointed out that to maximize the opportunities that exist in the different cities, it is important to consider that "we are going through an accelerated urbanization process, our cities reflect high inequality indices, exclusion limits growth and economic development, and cities present an opportunity to directly address social inclusion policies", and offered five key elements for the construction of a New Inclusive Urban Agenda: "an agenda focused on people, inequality, and climate change, as main subjects of the programmatic agenda: the ODS and COP21; strengthen governance at different levels; expand financing mechanisms; and develop measurements, monitoring, and evaluation". 

Debate tables

"Creando ciudades exitosas y saludables para todos" (Creating successful and healthy cities for all) was the title of the conference where Guillermo Peñalosa, a renowned world expert in the area of urban development as President of Ciudades 8 80, reflected on the impacts on the quality of life of citizens, especially the most vulnerable. After the conference, a round table explored the development possibilities shared by cities of Spain and Latin America. The participants in the round table included experts such as Iñigo de la Serna, Mayor of Santander; José Francisco Ballesta, Mayor of Murcia; Daniela Chacón, Vice Mayor of Quito, and Aníbal Gaviria Correa, Mayor of the city of Medellín (2012-2015) and awardee of the Lee Kuan Yew World City 2016 award.

Another subject addressed in Santander was "Los modelos de innovación en ciudades inteligentes y exclusivas" (Innovation models in intelligent and exclusive cities), a conference in charge of Alfonso Vegara, President of the Fundación Metrópoli. The subsequent debate included the participation of Esteve Almirall, Coordinator of the Centro de Innovación en ciudades de Esade (Center for the Innovation of Cities of Esade); Pilar Conesa, Curator of the Smart City Expo World Congress and Founder of Anteverti; Olga Gil, Doctor in Political Sciences and Sociology from the European Institute of Florence and researcher at the Universidad Camilo José Cela (UCJC); Tomás Vera, President of the Ciudad Foundation and Director of the Ibero-American Forum on Cities, and David Quirós, responsible for Social Innovation Strategy and Smart City at the City Council of Hospitalet de Llobregat.

The conference ended with the round table "Smart Santander 2.0: de la Internet de las cosas a la Internet táctil" (Smart Santander 2.0: from the Internet of things to the digital Internet), which included the participation of José Luis Gil, Teacher at the Universidad de Cantabria and Director of the Santander 2020 Strategic Plan, and Luis Muñoz, Teacher at the Universidad de Cantabria and responsible for the Telematics Engineering Group at the UC. 

'Future in Spanish' has been sponsored by the Government of La Rioja and the City Council of Logroño, the Fundación Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR), the Consejo Regulador de la DOCa Rioja, Ramondín, la Caixa, Iberia, Iberdrola, and AENA, with the collaboration of the Fundación García Márquez para el Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano (FNPI) (Garcia Marquez Foundation for the New Ibero-American Journalism). More informationm at www.futuroenespañol.es