Following up the first successful event held on February 16th, 2021, the Municipality of Kfar Saba, a partner in the SME4SMARTCITIES project organised and hosted a second meeting of the cities lead group on April 12th, 2021. Amongst participants were municipality CEOs and representatives of cities from Spain, Italy, and Israel. 

While the first meeting introduced the recent SME4SMARTCITIES study findings and the topics of innovation, climate change readiness and sustainable development, the second meeting focused on a discussion of the city officials of the urban challenges study results, the top economic, social, and environmental challenges that the participating cities are facing and the strategies and types of solutions that could be applied.

The participating cities in the cities lead group of the project that took place in the meeting are Malaga, Murcia, Cartagena, Molina de Segura, Genova, Kfar Saba, Tel Aviv, Herzlia, and Eilat. Also participated senior officials from the Murcia region in Spain and the Liguria region in Italy. Together, they lead innovation, climate readiness, and sustainability initiatives across the Mediterranean.

The meeting was a great opportunity to increase the collaboration between the cities that will lead to the application of innovative services in the cities across the Mediterranean. By promoting regional and international collaborations and by coordinating together the next steps, the meeting had an important role in advancing the project objectives.

As cities continue to grow, so is the number of challenges they are facing. Environmental, economic, or social emerging issues call for new and unproven urban solutions. The increasing need for urban innovation will result in the development of a significant number of smart city initiatives, creating new business opportunities for Mediterranean SMEs. If we want our cities to be efficiently managed and more liveable for communities, public authorities and SMEs have to work together to come up with the best technological solutions. SME4SMARTCITIES aims at making this collaboration possible by reinforcing the capacities of Mediterranean cities and SMEs and by helping cities to be the front-runners of innovation.

SME4SMARTCITIES is funded by the EU under the ENI CBC Programme, which finances cooperation projects for a more competitive, innovative, inclusive, and sustainable Mediterranean area.