Photo: Peterborough-wins-global-smart-city-award

Peterborough wins global smart city award

20 November 2015

by Jonathan Andrews

The medium-sized UK city, Peterborough, has beaten larger competitors–including Moscow, Dubai and Buenos Aires–to be selected as this year’s World Smart City, presented during the Smart City Expo World Congress held in Barcelona.

“It’s a great recognition of our work but actually most importantly it shows that a medium-sized city that has the ambition and the guts can be visible and awarded globally,” Cécile Faraud, Circular Economy Officer, Peterborough City Council told Cities Today. “It is a great signal to other similar sized cities worldwide, we have a voice, we are doing great things.”

Delivered by economic development company, Opportunity Peterborough and Peterborough City Council, the Peterborough DNA Smart City programme focuses on growth, innovation, skills and sustainability with the goal of making Peterborough a better place to invest, work and live. The city is also one of four urban labs in which the projects of the UK Future City initiative are being developed. The city’s long-term commitment, beginning in the 1990s, to become the environmental capital of the UK, along with the fact that it was the first city to apply circular economy strategies together with a model of citizen involvement in designing its urban transformation, convinced the award’s jury of seven international experts.

“We tend to do things slightly different in Peterborough,”added Faraud. “We are actually implementing the ‘circular city’ which is a new and different concept. When you look at a circular economy you have products, companies, policies and consumers. All of them actually sit in cities, so we want to integrate that and look at it all rather than looking at silos.”

Other winners included the Hebei Digital Education Centre in China which won best project, and in the innovative initiative category the winner was Findeter, the Colombian Development Bank, for its Digital Diamond programme in the Caribbean and the Santanderes region. An honorary award was also presented to India for its Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor.

The Smart City Expo World Congress, organised by Fira de Barcelona, brought together 500 cities from five continents, 465 exhibitors and over 400 speakers, making the 5th edition the largest ever. Istanbul will next play host for the regional edition in April 2016.

 

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