BARCELONA, Spain, Nov. 08, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Curitiba has been awarded as Smart City of 2023 this afternoon at the World Smart City Awards gala held at Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC), event organized by Fira de Barcelona. The awards acknowledge the most outstanding initiatives and projects in the innovation and urban transformation industry. The Jury chose the Brazilian city for its approach to smart urban planning, socioeconomic growth and environmental sustainability through a human-centric approach.
This year's edition also included a special Leadership award in recognition to the continuing efforts to drive urban innovation internationally. The 2023 recipients were Anna Lisa Boni, Deputy Mayor of Bologna and Secretary General of Eurocities from 2014 to 2021, and Claudio Orrego, Governor of the Santiago de Chile Metropolitan Region.
The Mobility award went to the Konya Metropolitan Municipality for its project to restore old streetcars in the city of Meram (Turkey) to make them available exclusively to cyclists, with the aim of increasing bicycle awareness and developing a new transportation.
In the Safety & Resilience category, the winner was Gangnam-gu (Republic of Korea), for its active policy of supporting marginalized social groups. And the Enabling Technologies award went to Tampere (Finland) for developing an urban-social digital twin that harnesses information from its Data & Insights platform to make data-driven decisions that are purposeful urban services.
Environmental and management projects
The Energy & Environment award went to Bordeaux (France) for the design of a set of tools to obtain reliable indicators on the comfort temperature in the city; while the winner of the Governance & Economy category was the US Mayor Roundtable initiative from the United States for spearheading a digital transformation that not only modernizes cities paying special attention to underserved communities through a human-centric approach.
Saudi Aramco's Dhahran Smart City (Saudi Arabia), a platform that integrates the advantages of IoT and AI to manage facilities and services won the Infrastructure & Building award, and Breda (Netherlands), the Living & Inclusion category, for an application to make it easier for people with disabilities to enter cities and events.
The Innovation category had two winners: the SPIRE initiative led by the UN and the European Urban Initiative to renature polluted urban soil in Baia Mare (Romania), and to ECO-HEROES for a vocational training program in the field of ecotourism in Marrakesh (Morocco).
For media requests please contact:
Salvador Bilurbina
Email: sbilurbina@firabarcelona.com
Phone: +34628162674
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/c0f68e09-54c7-427f-ba87-6b803057de7c
