CommuniCity at the Connected Smart and Sustainable Cities and Communities Conference 2023

Organized by Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC), the conference took place from 17 to 18th of January in Brussels, Belgium. The CSSCC Conference is a unique global opportunity for cities, regions, towns, as well as national and international policy makers and companies, to connect with the forefront of human-centered social development, shaped by real-time connected technologies, markets and policies in the 21st century.

The CommuniCity project was mentioned in three different panels and round tables of the event: “Digital transformation: what next?” “Living-in.EU– Involving 300 million citizens”, and “Measuring digital transformation in cities.”

CommuniCity Helsinki Workshop in November 2022

The Helsinki Workshop for #CommuniCity, organized by Forum Virium Helsinki and hosted by Demos Helsinki, was held between November 22 to 24, and it was an excellent opportunity for partners in the Cities clusters – Amsterdam, Helsinki, and Porto – to have productive discussions, share best practices for each city, and conduct presentations for CommuniCity’s pilots and Open Calls.

On the third day the partners from Porto Digital, Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC), Domus Social, and City of Amsterdam, visited the Helsinki Education Hub, an EdTech incubator for startups and testbed for educational solutions, where Ms. Anna Rantapero-Laine shared insights about the Education Hub and Helsinki EAC – Easy Access Co-Development -model. Next Ms. Marjo Kenttälä introduced Testbed Helsinki.

In the afternoon, the consortium participated in a field visit with Ms. Tuija Salovaara and Ms. Kaisa Schmidt-Thomé to the neighborhood of Malminkartano, a Living Lab area to learn more about the local social challenges.

CommuniCity Kick-off Meeting in September 2022

CommuniCity’s kick-off meeting happened on September 13 and 14, 2022, in Brussels, Belgium. The two days were filled with productive conversations about the implementation of the project amongst the twelve partners present on-site and online.

The meeting was a chance for partners to meet and discuss aspects related to the beginning of the project, such as the value of the involvement of communities from the start and how to do this ethically and how co-creation and emerging technologies, such as AI, can help those communities through a calendar of open calls and selected pilots.

During the meeting, WP leaders shared their first presentations with descriptions of tasks, deliverables, and upcoming actions. It was a constructive assembly, leading to the raising of many important points that will remain relevant for the development of the project.