Skip to main content

EU strategic implementation plan to invest in smart cities

The European Commission (EU) is expected to invest around US$276 million to create smart cities in the next two years. The High Level Group of the European Innovation Partnership (EIP) for Smart Cities and Communities has agreed the Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP) which will serve as the basis for speeding up the deployment of Smart City solutions in Europe. The SIP is drafted by and based on a thorough consultation of representatives from industry, cities, civil society and research including UITP.
October 25, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
The 1690 European Commission (EU) is expected to invest around US$276 million to create Smart cities in the next two years. The High Level Group of the European Innovation Partnership (EIP) for Smart Cities and Communities has agreed the Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP) which will serve as the basis for speeding up the deployment of Smart City solutions in Europe.

The SIP is drafted by and based on a thorough consultation of representatives from industry, cities, civil society and research including UITP. The plan sets out a broad range of new actions and approaches to encourage cities to become smarter. The plan concentrates on how to drive forward improvement in buildings and planning, new information technologies, sustainable urban transport and energy, and new ways of integrating these areas.

The plan also suggests improvements to the way that cities are run with better ways of involving citizens and more collaborative ways of doing things. It suggests innovation zones, new business models, a re-evaluation of rules and legislation and a more standardised approach to data collection and use to enable better comparisons between approaches and between cities.

This is just the beginning of a large scale programme of work by all the partners and many others. An important part of that work will be the "’Lighthouse Projects’, cities which will demonstrate and deliver Smart city solutions on a large scale. These projects will be partly financed by the European Commission's Horizon 2002 Research Funds. Further business and public funding will help to spread these new solutions to other cities and economies of scale will help to make these innovative and high tech solutions the norm and available more easily to all cities and neighbourhoods.

The Commission is expected to invest around €200m to create Smart cities in the next two years. More details about these next steps and about European Commission funding and business commitments will be announced at the official launch of the delivery plan on 26 November in Brussels.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Home based real time travel information drives reduction in car use
    January 20, 2012
    David Crawford investigates a new approach to discouraging car use - the 'kitchen as travel centre'. ITS technology working together with UK planning legislation is driving an innovative 'kitchen as travel centre' approach to home design which is boosting public transport as an alternative to car use. The combination is already proving powerful enough to assuage environmentalist opposition to major urban developments. It is also being seen as a way of delivering wider social and community benefits inside an
  • Will the European Electronic Tolling System serve its purpose?
    February 3, 2012
    ASECAP's Kallistratos Dionelis asks whether, despite the best intentions at the policy level, the European Electronic Tolling System can ever hope to serve the customer in the way it is intended to. Reality doesn't just happen. In many ways, reality is created. We first create or produce a reality and then we consume it; this takes time and has a cost that needs to be covered.
  • Promoting cycling is the solution to congestion and pollution
    August 20, 2015
    Cycling offers health, air quality and road space/parking benefits, promoting governments and the EU to look at tax and technology initiatives. David Crawford reports. One way to improve urban air quality is to make green alternatives to car use financially attractive. Incentivising employees to switch their travel-to-work mode to using their own bikes could increase cycling’s modal share of commuting travel by 50%, a recent French research project suggests. The country’s government already subsidises pu
  • Harmonisation of Europe's ITS deployment still unbalanced
    January 31, 2012
    Dean Herenda, Chairman of the EasyWay project, talks about the progress made and the progress still to be made in harmonising ITS deployment across the European Union. "The deployment and use of ITS in road transport across Europe was and still is unbalanced" Although Europe can be proud of being home to some of the world's most advanced ITS solutions, the relative disparities between Member States of the European Union (EU) in terms of the extent and technological sophistication of deployments actually sta