Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft | Morgenstadt
Smart City
Why Smart City?
Digitization as a societal and economical megatrend is increasingly reaching the municipal administration. Cities such as Munich are currently developing "Smart City guidelines" as an interdisciplinary section of their integrated urban development. Cologne is one of the few German partner cities in the European lighthouse project for "Smart Cities & Communities (SCC)" and is part of our project consortium GrowSmarter, Hamburg has developed an ambitious strategy for becoming a "digital capital", and "hidden champions" like Norderstedt near Hamburg or Ulm in Baden-Württemberg are successfully on their way of digitization.
12 smart city solutions will be put in practice in Cologne's district Nordost in order to showcase a wide range of possibilities for smart city development. The fields of application range from climate-friendly mobility to energy efficiency measures.
Current or former Morgenstadt partner cities such as Stockholm, New York, Singapore, Barcelona or Vienna, have already realized that a long-term sustainable urban development must build upon a new economic and technological model. We have adopted Vienna's definition of smart city as a city "which meets the challenges of the 21st century. This is achieved with a long-term and holistic strategy, which aims to guarantee the best quality of living for all people in the city–combined with maximum resource preservation, which is brought about by comprehensive innovation."
European Smart City projects
Within the framework of the European research program 'Horizon 2020', the Smart and Sustainable Cities (SCC) calls play an important role. This European initiative promotes the sustainable development of cities and help them to become "smarter". The related projects introduce a certain number of frontrunner cities, which are called lighthouse cities, in which the innovative technologies are implemented and strategies for the transformation process into a smart city are developed. The so-called follower cities then apply the gained knowledge in their city. Lighthouse and follower cities work together on innovative solutions in the fields of energy, mobility, climate protection, etc. through the utilization of new technologies and social innovations. With the support of the European SCC projects, cities can implement their projects ideas in reality and companies can also contribute to the City of the Future. The following chart shows the current European landscape of SCC projects (including, for example, Triangulum, Grow Smarter and Smarter Together).
New Projects in 2017
European and German projects are also commencing this year. For Instance, a German funding program SMARTilience, which aims to develop a municipal control model for climate protection in large German cities, and the European project UNaLab, which promotes the development of a European framework for nature-based solutions.