The last week of June, the fourth meeting of the MAtchUP project was held in Valencia. The three lighthouse cities (Valencia, Dresden and Antalya), together with the follower cities (Herzlyia, Kerava, Ostend and Skopje), have met to share the advances obtained. 

The agenda of the event included among others:  5 parallel sessions, 15 video interviews and  the Valencia Study Tour, the goal is to help cities to integrate environmental and social needs in their urban plans, and to pave the way towards energy transition.

In the parallel sessions the MAtchUP partners discussed the main pillars of the project: energy, mobility, ICT and non-technical actions. The three cities showed their developments and results about the city platforms, such as open data portals, representations of data sets and dashboards.

The first stop in the Valencia Study Tour was in the Traffic Management Centre: the visitors could saw, how the real time city traffic information, provided by over 3000 detectors installed all over the city; is processed and controlled, for an efficient and safe traffic for all road users. 

Continuing with the visit, the city council presented two of the main projects of the Valencia smart city strategy. One of them, is “Decidim València” citizen participation project; the first dedicated department, created to put in place tools and mechanisms for citizens participation through dialogue and digitalization, decentralisation, co-design working groups. And the second one, is València App, it provides real time information and integrates all services from the open governent projects as a one stop shop at citizens disposal.

Later, the partners visited de García Lorca Public School, which participates in the 50/50 programme about enerty efficiency. Thanks to this activity, students, parents and teachers are now more aware about the environmental, economic and social impact of their consumption.

The meeting was closed with a visit to the Albufera Natural Park of Valencia. The following plenary meeting will be in one of the follower cities, Skopje, in December of this year.  See you soon!

Good teams make the success of a project. @matchupEU