Morgenstadt: City Insights Meeting Porto

Design the city of tomorrow together - cooperation of European smart city networks Morgenstadt & SmartImpact in Porto

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Second network meeting of the year in Porto. Together with the European governance initiative SmartImpact and numerous partners, the Morgenstadt team of the Fraunhofer IAO gained insights into the Portuguese start-up scene, developed concepts for smart neighborhoods and worked on building an innovation park for the Argentine capital Buenos Aires.

Stuttgart/Porto – The second network meeting of the year began for the Fraunhofer Morgenstadt initiative research team, consisting of Alanus von Radecki, Dr. Natalie Pfau-Weller, Nora Fanderl, Marielisa Padilla and Alexander Schmidt, one day earlier than expected. The reason for this was the cooperation with the initiative SmartImpact, a part of the Urbact network that comprises 10 European cities, including the Irish capital of Dublin and the Dutch metropole of Eindhoven, which are also partners of the Morgenstadt. The aim of SmartImpact is to improve the holistic management of cities and to make positive changes in the local innovation system of a city. Due to the various intersections with the innovation fields of the Morgenstadt initiative, the two networks arranged during the first 2 days a three-days meeting aiming to profit from the mutual experience and to make use of synergies. The Tuesday afternoon was marked by mutual exchange and learning. The participants had the opportunity to visit the Portuguese Atlantic metropolis as a part of a city guided tour, which included, besides classical attractions, the local start-up scene that made Porto well known far beyond the borders of Portugal.

On Wednesday morning, the network meeting, held at the headquarters of Ordem dos Contabilistas Certificados, the largest Portuguese professional association, was officially opened by Filipe Araújo, the city's innovation executive. The location in the heart of the harbor metropolis combines the architecture of the art nouveau with a modern roof terrace, thus allowing the participants to exchange their ideas and concepts for the city of the future in a relaxed and appealing atmosphere. In the morning the Fraunhofer researchers in keynote speeches presented insights to the various neighborhood projects, just before the core part of the meeting, the Innovations workshop began. In frames of this workshop variant interdisciplinary teams developed specific solutions to the challenges of smart neighborhoods based on so-called Fishbowl method. A round table consisted of a company representative, a city official and a Fraunhofer researcher was a part of it. Such format ensured a holistic approach enabling comparison of the specific requirements of  municipalities, scientific expertise as well as the technological solutions of the companies. In the next step the participants voted on the best ideas and developed them in the second round in classical workshops. In the afternoon, the most recent spin-off of the Fraunhofer Community, the Smart City marketplace »Bable«, that would allow companies to offer cities the right products meeting their specific needs, was officially launched.

On the last day of the meeting the participants had an opportunity to participate in the "Smart City Finance" workshop as well as in the specific workshop "Buenos Aires". In the latter ideas and concepts for the Argentine capital, which is also a partner of the Morgenstadt Initiative, were developed to support building an innovation park for start-ups of all sectors, from IT to biotechnology. At the end Morgenstadt partner companies had the opportunity to present business ideas in so-called "crash tests". Using this method the ideas were thoroughly examined by the attendants, each of which was presenting ideas from the point of view of a specific stakeholder (e.g. the mayor or an investor).

At the network meeting there participated again numerous partners of the Morgenstadt, including among others representatives of EON, TÜV Süd, Breeze, as well as Fraunhofer ISE researches. The feedback of the present partners and interested parties was totally positive, according to Morgenstadt: CityInsights Head Dr. Natalie Pfau-Weller. She also told us about her personal highlight of the second network meeting in 2017: "In addition to the city of Porto, which is really worth visiting, I was particularly impressed with the startup scene  as well as the plans for building an innovation park in Buenos Aires which  find very felicitous ".

For those interested, the next Morgenstadt Network Meeting will be held in Berlin on September 26th at the well-known SmartCity fair SCS, which is a part of INTERGEO. The Morgenstadt Initiative is this year a strategic partner of the fair in the federal capital. The first network meeting of the next year will take place again in spring 2018 in Eindhoven.

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