Matteo Satta started a collaboration with Up2Europe.eu to write some articles on #EU Affairs, but with a focus on #cities.
Up2Europe is the first ideas accelerator for European cooperation. It aims to create a virtual community for Up-and-coming professionals working on European projects. It works to build a network to improve cooperation.
The articles written are 4:
The commission has been heavily investing in pilot Smart City projects for a long time, but you may often have R&D or innovation projects pretending to have Cities onboard when they are in fact represented by universities or researchers. This has some practical advantages, such as avoiding the potential barriers due to bureaucracy , but in reality you need a city onboard to ensure your project is successful.
(Smart) City projects are more and more funded by the European Commission, but consortia often struggle to get cities on board or really engage them. This affects these projects’ sustainability outputs as they rarely get past the “In-lab” vision or implementation stage. Having a city onboard in these projects is an absolute MUST, but how can you reach cities and properly engage with them?
Nowadays, we are seeing an increasing trend of people requesting to lower taxes and, as a result, public budgets. This leads many cities to try to find external funding, but they quickly understand that it is not always that easy. Experience is inevitably an important factor, but here are some tips that can help cities anticipate problems.
EU funding has always helped cities support their innovation processes, particularly on digital transformation and environment, but the approach is now moving toward a new ambitious program to create some “showroom cities”.
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