Barcelona's Deputy Mayor for Urban Habitat, Antonio Vives, announced partnerships with Cisco, Telefonica, Abertis, Agbar and Schneider Electric to promote the Smart City Campus, an area dubbed 22@, a new district in the Poblenou area of Barcelona which will focus on the development of businesses, universities, entrepreneurship, ICT research centers, ecology and urban planning. The Barcelona City Council has sought strategic relationships with these worldwide technology leaders to convert Barcelona into a laboratory for experimentation and innovation.
Barcelona's Deputy Mayor for Urban Habitat, Antonio Vives, announced partnerships with Cisco, Telefonica, Abertis, Agbar and Schneider Electric to promote the Smart City Campus, an area dubbed 22@, a new district in the Poblenou area of Barcelona which will focus on the development of businesses, universities, entrepreneurship, ICT research centers, ecology and urban planning. The Barcelona City Council has sought strategic relationships with these worldwide technology leaders to convert Barcelona into a laboratory for experimentation and innovation.
Barcelona City Hall and Cisco are collaborating to promote a leading integrated urban platform which allows for the development of functional technological applications to improve the efficiency and quality of services received by citizens. Currently, both parties are working to reinforce their framework, dig into the collaboration and facilitate the possible future implementation of an Innovation Center in Barcelona that would be a leader in exploring new technological possibilities, serving cities and people.
Along with the alliance of universities, cities and international companies, and in collaboration with MIT, Barcelona will develop a "City Protocol," a worldwide standard to measure the degree of sustainability and capacity to generate a higher-quality of life for its citizens. This protocol is expected to be developed within the next 18 months.
In February 2011, Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers met with Jordi Hereu, the mayor of Barcelona to announce the initiative that will use technology as an enabler to help transform Barcelona into a blueprint for modern urban development. The initiative placed Cisco's Urban Platform Reference Architecture at the heart of the city's vision to become a global reference model for sustainable urban development and the economic engine for Southern Europe.