Mayors, city experts, and top-level European Commission representatives joined Forum Europe’s inaugural Future City Conference

Entitled The Future City: The Core of the Green and Digital Transitions in Europe, this new Forum Europe conference gathered over 400 European and national policy-makers, regional decision-makers and city representatives as well as top level industry experts to discuss the role that European cities can play in the twin transitions towards climate neutrality and digital leadership.

As the centres of economic growth and the closest level of governments to people, smart and sustainable cities of the future, cities have the potential to play a major role in dealing with many of the critical issues faced in Europe today, by becoming key drivers of the green and digital transitions goals set out by the European Commission.

48 city representatives - including Mayors, Deputy Mayors, CTOs and CDO - European and national policy-makers, researchers and key industry representatives gathered online over two days to explore the impact that digital technologies, combined with a strong focus on sustainability and a human-centric approach, can have to facilitate the transformation of cities into agile, efficient, green and resilient places, to improve the quality of life of their inhabitants and promote social cohesion.

They explored a number of issues ranging from Open Data; Connectivity, computing power, digital infrastructure & domain integration; Sustainable and Smart Mobility on Day 1, before focusing on the Renovation Wave Strategy and the role of a digitised and sustainable construction sector; resilient food systems; renewable energy and systems integration on Day 2 – all in the context of future urban development policies post Covid-19.

The event also featured a ‘City Innovation Hub’ allowing industry leaders, SMEs, start-ups, researchers and other stakeholders to showcase a product, project or idea having the potential of positively impacting the green and digital transitions of cities in Europe and worldwide. All of the Hub’s contributions can be found here.

We would like to thank our sponsors Dell Technologies, Johnson Controls, Microsoft and MOVE EU as well as our partner Eurocities for their invaluable support of this year’s event and look forward to bring the 2^nd edition to Brussels in 2022. In the meantime, you can catch up on all session replays here.

Check out the event highlights: