PLENARY SESSION

Session 2: Cities

Alfonso Vegara

Creative cities

The urban planner and sociologist, Alfonso Vegara, director of the Metropoli Foundation and expert in urban housing, gave an overview of “some of the most interesting practices around the world regarding intelligent or creative territories,” emphasising that every city "needs to clearly define a profile of excellence which can serve as the foundation for its future competitiveness”. As one of Spain’s most internationally recognised specialists on territorial planning and development, he expressed his conviction that intelligent territories have to consider and respect their own “DNA” and that they must pursue an economic strategy while seeking social development and environmental quality.

KEY IDEAS

• Components of excellence to foment competitiveness
Every territory and city must define its components of excellence, on which they can "base a unique profile for the future", because "these components of excellence are strengths that each city possesses that can serve as the foundation for a competitive advantage".

• The importance of cities in an urban world
"Cities are important because in today's global market, it is cities and not states that compete." Moreover, cities are "the cradle of creative processes, and at the same time, an answer to the challenges of sustainability, which are the most important challenges that we face in building a sustainable future".

• Stimulating intelligent territories
"We have to stimulate intelligent territories that can identify their respective components of excellence", through "dialogue and planning". We can draw inspiration from Philadelphia, which has rediscovered its identity to "invent projects for the future"; Singapore, "whose miraculous experience is based on the fact that it has been able to constantly reinvent itself over the past 40 years"; Bilbao; and La Rioja.