Smart Cities was the focus of the sixth TalkFOR5G talk
“Ready & Start! The smart city is connected” was the title of the recent TalkFor5G with members of parliament and local authority representatives.
A new appointment with the TalkFOR5G online events organised by Fondazione Ottimisti & Razionali and INWIT. The future of cities was discussed in the meeting of 21 June, which you can see again in its entirety on our YouTube channel. The title of the event was “Ready & Start! The smart city is connected” and saw the participation of the Members of Parliament, Vincenza Bruno Bossio (PD), Transport, Post and Telecommunications Commission, Claudia Porchietto (FI), Finance Commission and Davide Serritella (M5S), Transport, Post and Telecommunications Commission, and local authority representatives, Alessandro Porto, Councillor for technological innovation and Smart cities of the Municipality of Catania and Eugenio Seccia, Councillor for technological innovation of the Municipality of Pescara. Michelangelo Suigo, INWIT’s External Relations, Communications and Sustainability Director, was also present.
The future of connected cities
The cities of the near future will have to be “intelligent” and connected: “INWIT is making its contribution to the widespread development of 5G, and therefore of smart cities, with new towers and with dedicated indoor and outdoor micro-coverage with Distributed antenna systems (Das) and small cells” – declared Michelangelo Suigo, INWIT’s External Relations, Communications and Sustainability Director. “We are in a fundamental phase for laying the foundations for a resilient, innovative and socially shared digital ecosystem, an essential element for constructing the cities of the future which, thanks to the new technologies, will be able to face the huge demographic, urban, ecological and production changes in the coming years”. As Key4Biz reports, in 2020 75% of the global population lived in an urban conglomeration and it’s no coincidence that cities are responsible for 70% of the production of CO2 emissions. The Smart City is the natural technological evolution of cities, in a context of digitalisation and ecological transformation, with the result that 59% of Italian cities have already launched a smart city project.
The contributions at TalkFOR5G
“This year the pandemic has made us become more digital”, declared Vincenza Bruno Bossio, member of the Transport, Post and Telecommunications Commission. Now, thanks to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), there are substantial funds to use for improving our performance. The target must not be that of just constructing smart cities, but a smart country, a digital ecosystem that connects every aspect of the country’s life, from the sustainability of the places we live in to mobility”. “Italy cannot ignore technological development, also in consideration of the sustainable targets indicated by the United Nations”, declared Davide Serritella, member of the Transport, Post and Telecommunications Commission. “Technology will be at the centre of the recovery and development and 5G is an essential tool for achieving the objectives that we set in terms of fast networks and broadband connection. It’s a transformation that needs to be completed as soon as possible.”
“If we want to find one positive thing in this period of the pandemic, it’s certainly the increased familiarity of citizens and the public administration with technology. We have the resources to make a leap forward in this sense in Italy”, declared Claudia Porchietto, member of the Finance Commission. “If we are able to organise the costs in the right way, we will have a great opportunity to promote the growth of the country’s productive system.”
The TalkFOR5G talks will return on 14 July 2021 with a meeting with the title “The role of the University in a changing world”.