«Working in a network is an an explosion of knowledge»
Cities are dynamic systems facing a myriad of challenges. While implementing innovative solutions —such as a city digital twin— may come with obstacles, this process brings invaluable knowledge that can be adapted and applied in diverse contexts. City networks play a pivotal role in facilitating connections between cities per se, mayors or technicians, and a space to learn from one another's successes and challenges to ultimate improve the quality of life of citizens, creating more liveable, sustainable and resilient urban environments.
To explore this topic, we speak with José de la Uz, mayor of Las Rozas de Madrid, president of Las Rozas Innova, and president of the Spanish Network of Smart Cities (Red Española de Ciudades Inteligentes — RECI). With him, we discuss the impact that working in networks like RECI brings to both decision-makers and citizens, and how cities of all sizes can benefit from being a smart city.
Smart cities don’t have a specific size. It’s about every municipality, every leader, and every mayor having the opportunity, with their team and depending on the city, to build a long-term future plan. From there, based on the needs and characteristics of each municipality and each territory, it’s about identifying what technology, innovation, and digitalization can be incorporated to ultimately improve the quality of life and happiness of the residents, and ensure that everything is more efficient and sustainable.
When I became mayor, the focus was on what traffic lights could offer to make a city smart. Of course, Las Rozas, with 100,000 residents, doesn’t have many traffic lights. Instead of getting discouraged and throwing in the towel, we focused on our unique characteristics: our geographical spread, our sociological and socioeconomic profile. We worked to transform the administration from within, looking at how to manage our territory and buildings, and how to identify and connect our ecosystem in a way that would attract and retain talent, while also benefiting the city’s overall strategy.
José de la Uz is the President of the Spanish Network of Smart Cities (RECI). Image by Yana Ralko on Unsplash
Working in a network is, first and foremost, an explosion of knowledge, an opening to what is happening. Often, in the office, city officials don’t really know what’s going on. You go out, you see, you listen. And the technicians working in the city, who are motivated and eager to make things happen, they enrich themselves through a network like RECI, which brings together 650 technicians and 150 cities, covering half of Spain’s population. Throughout the year, they share work agendas, collaborate systematically, and meet in person to exchange information and tackle challenges together. This saves money, and working in a network helps you go further.
The first time I heard about a city management platform based on a digital twin was, of course, at RECI technical meetings, as it was a completely unfamiliar term to me. Since then, and over the years, our work has focused first on organizing our own data, ensuring that our data is clean and prepare the sensors that gather information and feed them into a platform where data must be interoperable to create a digital twin of the city.
And what does this mean? A digital twin is about recreating Las Rozas virtually to analyse what happens if we restrict traffic near a school on certain streets and how to redirect it. It is about simulating digitally the decision-making and then applying those. For me, this is what RECI has made possible.
I would like cities to be more prosperous, with happier and freer citizens who have more opportunities. To that end, technology allows us to give people more time to enjoy their projects, save them money through efficiency, and create much more sustainable cities by optimizing urban management. Ultimately, what we aim for is happier, freer, and more prosperous citizens.