The smart city is a sustainable and livable city. In it, the possibilities of digital transformation are used to meet the challenges of the future.
Funding for smart city projects is well funded in Germany. The programs help cities to advance digitization projects. They are necessary in order to shape the transformation to a digital city in a non-discriminatory and gender-sensitive manner. So far, however, the transfer of solutions and experiences to other municipalities has not been successful enough. The same questions are being worked on in many places and similar things are being developed. This leads to a patchwork of technical solutions and unnecessarily wastes human, organizational and financial resources.
Individual lighthouses are not enough. It takes a sea of lights from smart cities. For this purpose, funding programs must be set up more sustainably. Technical, organizational and legal hurdles have to be overcome in order to transfer solutions. A joint approach to the development of solutions must be strengthened, competencies should be able to be built up.
In the position paper “Sea of lights instead of beacons: sustainably promote digitization in municipalities!” five central demands are made for more sustainable Smart City funding:
- Establish an ecosystem, strengthen cross-level cooperation, define standards
- Make funding more flexible and coordinate it
- Ensure legal and technical support and evaluation of measures
- Promote networking and subsequent use, ensure concrete implementation
- Enable qualification, promote cultural change
