Dear reader from the Smart City Expo World Congress,

I’m very much looking forward to speak at the congress in November. Here you can find more info about the proposal.

You can also visit the websites of the City Deals, but they are in Dutch:

>> City Deal ‘A smart city, that’s how you do it’: https://agendastad.nl/citydeal/een-slimme-stad-zo-doe-je-dat/
>> City Deal ‘Smart social’ https://agendastad.nl/citydeal/slim-maatwerk/
>> General info about the European Urban Agenda: https://agendastad.nl/europese-agendastad/
>> General info about Future City: Future City | future-city.nl)

Enjoy, Jan-Willem Wesselink – jan-willem@future-city.nl

15 april 2022,

About the proposal

I’m the leader of the City Deals ‘A smart city, that’s how you do it’ and ‘Smart Social’. 74 partners do participate in these City Deals (4 ministries, 5 provinces, 1 waterboard, 20 cities, 5 government companies, 17 companies, 2 healthcare institutions, 4 sector organizations, 11 social organizations, 5 knowledge institutions). Together, the leaders (ministers, aldermen, directors, presidents etc.) of these partners signed the Deal in 2020 which has the status of a covenant. The Deals are initiated by the Dutch Ministry of the Interior (Urban Agenda programme). The 2 City Deals focus on how digitization and technology can contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. The City Deal ‘A smart city, that’s how you do it’ focuses on a sustainable and healthy living environment and ‘Smart Social’ on offering social security, inclusion and opportunities for everyone and the prevention of digitization.

The participants in the City Deals are convinced that they can use digitization and technology to achieve the SDGs, democratise society more and thus develop liveable regions, cities and villages, where people are key. To achieve this, the City Deals are focussing on process innovation. We think innovation must be secured in the way governments and companies work. Therefore we change processes and develop instruments. In addition, we collect instruments from other organizations and share them via an online toolbox.
The City Deals are an important stimulus for Dutch smart city development. New interesting have arisen from the City Deal, tools have been developed and projects have been started. Always in public-private partnership. This has ensured, among other things, that 3 large European subsidies have been awarded to consortia from this network.

In the next step we are working on 6 showcase projects in the Netherlands, as an example for other municipalities. For this purpose, among other things, a SmartCityMajurityModel has been developed that objectively tests how smart a city is. The SDGs are key in this model and technology can only be used to make the lives of residents better.

In the lecture at the SCEWC, I wil share my vision on the smart city and explains how the City Deal approach has led to a powerful open ecosystem in which all partners work equally together leading to real results. He gives advises and points out pitfalls to the audience on how they can implement this method in their own country or region.

Jan-Willem Wesselink – jan-willem@future-city.nl