City of Santander, Spain. Image source: Shutterstock (#150126491).
Dear Reader,
In order to provide you with a deeper insight into urban development projects carried out by communities around the world we regularly interview mayors who have initiated or already completed smart projects in their cities. We ask each interviewee to answer the same set of questions so that they can share some of their valuable experience with you.
Today we interviewed Ms. Gema Igual Ortiz, the mayor of Santander. We would like to extend our sincere thanks to Ms. Igual for her contribution and hope you enjoy reading this interview!
Best regards,
Your SmartCityNews editorial staff
P.S. Did you know that our City Forum provides an overview of urban development projects carried out by communities across the globe? It also contains information about the city of Santander very soon..
Interview with Mayor Gema Igual Ortiz
Dear Mayor Igual, could you characterize Santander for our readers?
Santander is placed in the Northern part of Spain. It has a population of around 180,000 inhabitants with an intensive cultural activity. Till few years ago most of its activity was based on the service sector. However, from 2010 Santander is driving towards a new economic model relying on technology and knowledge.
What are the major challenges in Santander?
I tend to say that as in most of the medium size cities there are not severe issues. However, always we can improve things and among them traffic is one of them. But we are also concerned with the social dimension and this is one of the reasons why we are confident that the adoption of this new economic model based on technology and knowledge can help us to address issues such as unemployment which being below the average in Spain, is still high.
Did you go through a vision building process for the Santander of the future?
Yes, in 2010 we prepared a strategic plan for the city. We identified two main pillars: Culture and technology/innovation.
Which stakeholders did you involve in the vision building process?
For the former we will complete an important milestone with the upcoming inauguration of the Centro Botín (singular Renzo Piano’s building). This cultural center will vertebrate the whole activity of the city in this topic. Concerning technology and innovation we are making efforts for attracting both national and international companies interested to collaborate around the unique living lab that Santander offers to the interested stakeholders. But also we foster that researchers, citizens…get involved in entrepreneurship activities linked to the smart city concept.
Did you face challenges while integrating them? How did you manage those problems?
I cannot say that we are facing big issues unexpected. Of course, it is never easy to sit around a table several stakeholders which have different skills, wishes or objectives. But I am convinced that it is a matter of time and insisting with actions such as the workshops we jointly organize with the University of Cantabria and some SMEs.
What kind of activities did you initiate and how do they make your city smarter? What goals were you pursuing? Which major challenges do/does your project(s) address?
When we started the SmartSantander project our main priority, fulfilling the commitments of the European Project, was to deploy IoT aiming at supporting urban services and providing a framework on top of which researchers, companies and citizens could experiment. As such, we deployed infrastructure which supports parking service outdoors, environmental monitoring, adaptive street lighting and waste management. Then, the next step was to increase citizen awareness. Thus, we implemented several APPs which help the citizen to perceive that technology is making his/her life easier. This is really a challenge because citizens are reluctant at the very beginning.
In terms of challenges there are few of them particularly relevant. One of them is to assess on the sustainability derived from the savings linked to the urban service provision. Another one, refers to the citizen involvement.
Is there any (further) citizen involvement in your project and what are the explicit benefits for the citizens?
We are developing and deploying, jointly with University of Cantabria and other partners of the ORGANICITY project, a platform which aims at making available, to the citizens, a set of intuitive tools for designing and implementing new applications and services which try to solve some problems that have been identified by the citizens themselves. In this respect, we are looking for incentivation and rewarding mechanisms which can speed up the process.
The Mayor Gema Igual Ortiz. Image source: Manuel Alvarez.
In your view, what major challenges does a city face in the process of procuring smart solutions in general?
The procurement process is heavily anchored in regulations that are not suited for the dynamicity needed by the technology. This is becoming a relevant stopper for the adoption, by the cities, of the appropriate technologies that may bring significant savings.
Would you like to highlight one particular industry partnership or specific smart city solution of yours? What is your experience with or advice related to that solution you can share with other cities?
In terms of partnership, there are several examples such as the one between FERROVIAL, University of Cantabria and the Santander Municipality in which we have obtained interesting models for optimizing waste management service.
Do you have any advice or lessons learned that you would like to share with other cities aiming to implement a smart city project?
There are several relevant lessons learned. One of them is that technology still needs more maturity as well as the lack of standards which may avoid vendor lock-in. Also refers to the barriers to involve the citizens and the need to reinforce actions in this direction.
Thank you very much for the interview Ms. Igual.
We send our warmest greetings to Santander!
The City of Santander
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