MWCC has been present at Smart City World Expo 2022 held in Barcelona. The event has brought together more than 800 exhibitors, from 700 cities and 400 speakers who have met to find solutions to the problems of cities.

SCWC has exposed how cities, although they only occupy 2% of the planet’s surface, consume two thirds of its resources. Cities are home to 55% of the inhabitants (4 billion people) and generate 80% of global GDP.

The Smart City Expo 2022 in Barcelona will serve to promote the transformation of the world’s metropolises

This is the most important fair -and the first- that deals with this demographic unit, the city. Its mission: to promote an urban revolution that, although inexorable (every year there are a million more urbanites in the world), must be governed by intelligence, progress and sustainability.

The 11th edition affirms that the world population will reach 8,000 million inhabitants for the first time, and more than half live in cities. It is the moment in history in which the cities of the entire planet have welcomed more people and everything seems to indicate that the cities will be intelligent or they will not exist.

No metropolis is the same, nor is there a solution model that can be applied by default, but they all have similar challenges that, on their proportional scale, illustrate the great challenges of the planet.
One of the thematic axes is mobility. According to a study by the North American consultancy INRIX, the inhabitants of the most congested cities in the world spend more than four days a year trapped in their cars due to traffic jams. London and Paris lead this ranking at an international level, while Barcelona does so at a national level. According to the study ‘Gridlock and Growth: The Effect of Traffic Congestion on Regional Economic Performance’, eliminating traffic congestion in cities can increase worker productivity by up to 30%.

This is just one example of all the potential that a city hides if it takes the right course. The challenge of mobility brings along the most urgent: pollution. An investigation by the Sun Yat-sen University of Guangzhou (China) analyzed 167 large cities and concluded that only 25 of them represent 52% of total greenhouse gas emissions. Up to 23 of them are in China, where the presence of megacities (cities with more than 10 million inhabitants) is common. In fact, in 1975 there were only three of these giants: New York, Mexico City and Tokyo. Currently there are already 23 megacities, 13 in Asia, and it is estimated that by 2025 they will rise to 37. The figures that the UN is considering go in the same direction: cities are responsible for 70% of total GHG emissions. In addition to its ability to reverse this reality, there are more variables that determine the intelligence of a city: its human capital or talent, social cohesion, international projection, technology and innovation, urban planning or economy.

Beyond individual positions, there is a common and growing sensitivity towards smart which, without being exclusively synonymous with technology, is at the same time an investment magnet and a new economic lever. According to a study published by Frost & Sullivan, in 2025 the business opportunities generated by these cities could reach a value of 2.46 trillion dollars.

Without a doubt, MWCC and its more than 160 entities linked to cities and people are committed to public-private collaboration as an essential lever for the development of initiatives and projects.

Only progress is achieved with the creation of an ecosystem of synergies and collaboration that project infrastructure projects and urban solutions in a socially and economically manageable time horizon