25 November 2019
Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona is the leading international event for the smart city sector, and it is an important meeting point for experts and leaders from the world’s most innovative cities, companies, research centres and international organisations. For the second year we, as TreeBuilders, were present to discuss the importance of a smart and more sustainable urban green infrastructure.
“Imagine if trees gave off WiFi signals. We’d be planting so many trees, we’d probably save the planet. Too bad they only produce the oxygen we breathe.”
Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona is the leading international event for the smart city sector with a daily full programme of presentations on building a more sustainable urban future.
Together with 1,000 other participants, we welcomed nearly 25,000 professional visitors, as well as representatives from more than 700 cities and more than 400 international speakers, who shared their vision of building a more sustainable and liveable urban future. The event focused on five main topics and/or urgent issues that require change in the short term: Digital Transformation, Urban Environment, Mobility, Governance & Finance and Inclusive & Sharing Cites.
Explanation from our international consultant Joris De Coster of the many environmental and health benefits that mature, functional trees can bring to cities and mitigate climate change in public spaces.
Urban environment: The smartest thing a city can do is plant more trees
We travelled with the TreeBuilders company to Barcelona to discuss how cities can redesign the urban landscape to combat climate change, while meeting citizens’ needs. Trees improve the quality of life in our cities for many reasons.
In order for these trees to develop into functional trees that can offer our cities the health benefits that these mature trees have to offer, it is important for the trees to have sufficient growth capacity. This must be taken into account when planting a new tree. After all, trees are much more important for our living environment than we might think at first glance. They give colour to our environment and they provide the necessary visual appeal, but they can also make an important contribution to improving the often poor living conditions in our cities.