News

3/24/2010

www.cici2010.org.br

The International Conference on Innovative Cities – ICIC2010 – sponsored by the Federation of the Industries System of Paraná (FIEP) with the support of IPD ended on March 13, with significant public participation. During the four-day event, 3,500 people circulated in the almost 7 thousand square meters dedicated to the conference at Cietep, in Curitiba, and participated in 15 simultaneous daily conferences where they exchanged ideas and experiences and discussed proposals from 105 speakers from all over the world. 

”ICIC2010 was a success in all respects. But what matters the most is turning talk into action. From now on it is imperative to mobilize the networks that embrace the Innovative Cities initiative, since it is a cause that targets general wellbeing”, said Rodrigo Rocha Loures, president of FIEP. In his view, FIEP is committed to catalyze local development actions. “We are going to strive for this movement to spread throughout the entire state”, added Rocha Loures.

Owing to its reach, quality, content and unprecedented digital interactivity, the conference was considered by specialists, and by the media, as the biggest world debate on urban planning and development.
The conference was cosponsored by the Cities of London (England), Lyon (France, Bengaluru (India), Austin (USA), and Curitiba (Brazil), with support from UN and the World Bank.

 Important speakers made presentations, participated in panels, and shared information with a view to improving the lives of citizens and to opening up new economic and social sustainable development perspectives. Among them, Jeff Olson, specialist in green spaces and alternative means of transportation; educator José Pacheco; UN advisor, Jonas Rabinovitch; urban planner, Jordi Borja; the president of Global Urban Development , Marc Weiss; the president of the Environment Design Institute, Mitsuru Senda; cyberculture specialist, Pierre Lévy; author, Seven Johnson; architect and former mayor of Curitiba, Jaime Lerner; in addition to the mayors of London, Austin, Lyon, Chattanooga, Santa Maria, Maringá, Monobamba, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, and Campinas.

Industry and Cities – One of the highlights of ICIC2010 was the launch of the Innovative Cities program, an initiative of the FIEP System that joins together a series of short, medium, and long term actions geared to local development. The purpose is to create urban environments to nurture innovation and sustainable business. The city of Curitiba was chosen to spearhead the program with the project “Curitiba 2030”, developed in partnership with the City Hall and the OPTI Foundation (Spain’s Industrial Technological Prospection Observatory). Kicked off last year, the “Curitiba 2030” project is poised to influence the planning of the city in the long run and to create an urban environment capable of attracting, keeping, and developing individuals, businesses, and investments.

Twitter, the star – The participants registered for the conference had access to an interactivity structure that rendered the debates even more interesting. From the audience, laptops, or cell phone, they could give their opinion via Twitter, exhibited on large screens placed in the several auditoriums; they could also record, broadcast the conferences, or write about them on their blogs.

The Twitter topped the list of successful outcomes of ICIC2010. Already in the first day of the event, “tag”#2010CICI topped the microblog list, outdoing politicians, and celebrities.

Continuity Proposal – In the closing session, the School of Networks’s netweaver and ICIC2010 scientific committee coordinator, Augusto de Franco, submitted a proposal to create an Innovative Cities Global Network (RCI). Built on a virtual environment, RCI will unite people from all over the world involved in urban area innovation to share experiences and provide solutions among cities.  

This is not going to be a government network, but a network of people”, maintains political analyst Augusto de Franco. “It will be open for mayors and government officials to participate not as government representatives but as individuals interested in innovation in cities,” he adds.
 
Franco explains that the network will operate in a virtual environment that can be accessed at http://redeci.ning.com – with the purpose of congregating the highest number possible of people interested in innovation. The idea is to facilitate knowledge building on innovative cities by free information exchange and experience sharing in the network, disseminating methodologies and technologies of all kinds – including social – that can be appropriated, reinvented, and applied by individuals involved in city innovation anywhere.
“The idea is not to discuss how cities can be managed according to traditional management methods, but rather to show how they can implement innovative urban development practices”, says Franco. The RCI will not be headed by a formal coordinating committee; it will be spurred on by a center of animators and integrators in charge of stimulating information exchange via the network.