Barcelona

Barcelona is the capital city of the autonomous region of Catalonia in Spain and is the country’s
2nd largest city with a population of 1.6 million. Its urban area extends beyond the administrative
city limits with a population of around 4.5 million people, being the sixth-most populous urban
area in the European Union after Paris, London, Madrid, the Ruhr area and Milan. Population of
Barcelona Metropolitan region is over 5 million. It is also one of the oldest cities of Europe with
many historical buildings. In 2011 it came 4th in ranking of Europe’s best city for business. Its
extensive industrial foundation and entrepreneurial structure helped Barcelona in transforming
into knowledge based economy. Knowledge is used as an engine for economic to support
production and generation of talents. Barcelona is pioneering in implementing Smart City
concept with various incentives like 22@Barcelona district. Barcelona has set up explicit urban
policies and reforms aiming to lead towards becoming a strategy aims to provide an environment
for generating open environment through fostering clusters and Open Data or developing proper
living labs while directly involving citizens in the co-creation process of products or services. A
distinguishing characteristic of Barcelona’s smart city approach since the 1990’s is its approach
to urban governance which includes a close collaboration between politicians and companies as
well as academic institutions and residents, together developing smart projects . The general
objective is to use ICT for smart services in order to transform the business process of public
administration both internally and externally to be more accessible, effective and transparent.
The main driver for the Barcelona Smart City is the fostering of competitiveness of the city.
Other drivers are to innovation, create new channels of communication, facilitate access to
information both locally and internationally and improve the efficiency of public services.
Barcelona’s smart understanding about the steps and reveal common challenges, despite the
geographical and socio-economic a tendency towards more decentralized and up approaches to
planning and innovation. Innovation ecosystems are evolving through a top down and bottom up
initiatives, leading to networking and collaboration among extending to real innovation
communities. Barcelona’s Smart city knowledge economy is built with an industrial network and
clusters creating a relationship space, social network between companies, institutions and
citizens.