Smart mobility projects as change-makers? Outcomes from workshop in Sofia, Bulgaria

Common problems and joint solutions for smart mobility and citizen engagement were at the focus of a thematic workshop in Sofia in the framework of the Smarter Together project.

Energy Cities, Eurocities and Sofia Municipality organised the workshop, at which the Bulgarian capital presented its Smart Specialization Strategy.

The workshop brought together four Bulgarian cities participating in four H2020 Smart Cities projects: Smarter Together (Sofia), Sharing Cities (Burgas), SmartEnCity(Asenovgrad) and mySMARTLife (Varna) as well as the city of Plovdiv and Energy Cities’ collective member EcoEnergy-Municipal Energy Efficiency Network..

The 2-days workshop was a big opportunity for these cities to discuss common problems and find joint solutions for mobility and citizen engagement. A number of smart city critical topics were discussed:

• how to have a political and citizen buy-in for smart city projects
• how to identify the right stakeholders benefiting from the specific project and how to work with them; —* how to tailor the solutions for the specific local reality and ecosystem
  Moreover, the planning and usage of data was also addressed as a smart city critical topic, in which synergies can be created between these cities.

The Municipality of Sofia and the Sofia Urban Mobility Centre organized also a technical visit to the geothermal power station at the Sofia Regional Museum of History, the traffic Management Centre of Sofia, the parking management system at Sofia Urban Mobility Centre, the interconnection of the two metro lines and a refurbished social housing building for accommodation of vulnerable groups.

«Each city is unique: and we cannot pretend to be like the others. Burgas does not want to be Copenhagen for cycling, nor Shanghai for modal split.»
Ruska Boyadzhieva, Deputy Mayor of Burgas