Smart Cities: Barcelona and Oceania
Every city in our world must be «SMART». The concept of smart cities
originated at the time when the entire world was facing one of the
worst economic crises. In 2008, IBM began work on a ‘smarter cities’
concept as part of its Smarter Planet initiative. By the beginning of
2009, the concept had captivated the imagination of various nations
across the globe.
Countries like South Korea, UAE and China began to invest heavily into
their research and formation. Today, a number of excellent precedents
exist that India can emulate, such as those in Vienna, Aarhus,
Amsterdam, Cairo, Lyon, Málaga, Malta, the Songdo International
Business District near Seoul, Verona etc.
A smart city is an urban development vision to integrate multiple
information and communication technology (ICT) solutions in a secure
fashion to manage a city’s assets. Ensuring that our cities are
creative, connected and sustainable is a big challenge and an
opportunity to improve the lives of people along with the health and
future of the planet.
Our most popular city branding case study was Barcelona and Oceania.
The purpose of our case studies was to know how they deal with city
brand development and what makes them successful.
The success city branding of Barcelona
One of the examples of best branding strategies is Barcelona. Over the
last 20 years, Barcelona has successfully positioned itself among the
top cities around the world.
It is widely associated with creativity, culture, sport, gastronomy
and high quality of life. Barcelona has also become one of the main
tourist destinations in Europe, and is a popular place for corporate,
scientific, cultural and sporting events and congresses.
Today, Barcelona is a modern, advanced, cosmopolitan, open, creative
and inspiring city boasting a high quality of life.
The vision of the Strategic Metropolitan Plan for Barcelona for 2020
consisted of consolidating the AMB (Metropolitan Area of Barcelona),
with its model of quality social cohesion and integration, as one of
the most attractive and influential European regions for innovative
global talent.
Under the ‘Barcelona Growth’ program, 30 main economic measures were
identified to focus on. Those recommendations led to the rebranding of
Barcelona from «Mobile World Capital» (the city is host of the annual
World Mobile Congress) into a «Smart City» (Smart City Expo World
Congress also held in BCN), positioning Barcelona as a city of
knowledge and innovation
In order to implement the strategies and actions put forward in the
Strategic Metropolitan Plan — Vision 2020, ‘Barcelona Global’ was
created, a private, independent and non-profit association: a
citizen’s platform of ideas and action, made up by people and
companies who care about Barcelona and its future.
The association’s mission is to actively contribute to making
Barcelona one of the most attractive cities in the world, to attract
and develop talent and economic activity.
One of the main ideas and strategies under the action of Barcelona
Global is how to make Barcelona a truly ‘business friendly city’, as
well as how promote and position Barcelona through its main economic
sectors.
The success story of Oceania
Oceania’s city branding is based mainly on investment in both natural
resources and constrasting moderm cities to explore.
The Australian Continent consists of Australia, and several nearby
islands, including Tasmania and New Guinea. Greater Oceania includes
New Zealand, which is not on the same continental shelf as Australia,
and includes thousands of coral reef islands.
In order to study Oceania we analyzed the most interesting city
branding projects.
The City of Melbourne is facing the significant challenges of climate
change, population growth and urban heating, placing pressure on the
built fabric, services and people of the city. A healthy urban forest
will play a critical role in maintaining the health and liveability of
Melbourne.
The Urban Forest Strategy seeks to manage this change and protect
against future vulnerability by providing a robust strategic framework
for the evolution and longevity of Melbourne’s urban forest. The
Urban Forest program uses data to create a network of information
about trees. All these data are utilized as an educational and
environmental guide for both citizens and tourists making the city
shareable.
Also, the Australian Government developed another successful project
“the Solar Cities program” for seven Solar Cities located in Adelaide,
Alice Springs, Blacktown, Central Victoria, Moreland, Perth and
Townsville. The aim of this project was to bring industry, business,
governments and communities together and to rethink the way they
produce, use and save energy and protect Australia’s environment.
Last but not least, a specific government project improves
Christchurch reputation in order to enhance its safety with modern
structure against erthaquakes and also to increase tourist flows.
Christchurch experienced a devastating series of earthquakes in 2010
and 2011. The result has been a decrease in population, and the
movement of businesses out of the central commercial area.
Our team: Zarda Myrsini, Kontolatou Marianna, Kontomichis Venedictos, Tsivgeli Maria
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