The Human Smart Cities Conference was held in Lisbon on the 13^th of March, 2014. The event focused on the engagement and participation of citizens in the evolution of cities towards open innovation. The conference featured relevant speakers from the city of Lisbon and a number of European countries, international representatives from Brazil, Angola and Mozambique as well as emissaries from the European Commission and World Bank. Around 140 attendees followed the program.

The conference was in primis the occasion to discover how the city of Lisbon is operationalizing a disruptive urban innovation idea: fostering a continuous cooperation between citizens and local governments to promote effective smart cities making use of ICT, Future Internet and open data protocols.

Very stimulating was the discussion on Making Policy in the Human Smart City. Four Portuguese majors and city consultants reflected upon the future of human urban development in Portugal and Europe and confirmed how necessary it is to define precise local and international policy actions able to look at the wider picture in order to foster well grounded, organic changes.

The idea of co-designing ICT-based solutions with citizens to encourage urban development was strongly endorsed by the MyNeighbourhood initiative. MyNeighbourhood’s goals of centring technological development on people and reshaping neighbourhoods as lively habitats for smart development were extensively presented and achieved resounding success.  

ENoLL and the Living Labs domain were presented as a clever model of horizontal and user-centric innovation. Relevant speakers like Alvaro Oliveira (Alfamicro), Paulo Fernandes (Mayor of Fundao) and Victor Mulas (World Bank) referenced Living Lab’s methodologies as milestones in the definition of avant-garde smart cities in Europe and worldwide. 

See some pictures here!