Smart City Network

A collaboration project between 20 nordic cities with a common goal: to explore the Nordic way to create livable and sustainable cities

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About the network

The Nordic Smart City Network is a collaboration project between five countries, five capitals, and twenty cities with a common goal: to explore the Nordic way to create livable and sustainable cities.

The Nordic cities have the best preconditions to be global leaders in Smart City development. This is possible due to solid democratic societies that have high social trust, advanced digitalization, high degree of happiness amongst our citizens and great welfare and growth. To stay competitive in the global marked, the Nordic cities can benefit from closer collaboration by sharing experiences and provide each other a critical mass. Learning from each other can save time and make us smarter so resources can be used more effectively to create new innovative solutions.

With the setting-up of the Nordic Smart City Network the hope is that by sharing experiences and best practices we can make the cities better for the citizens.

Nordic Urban Living Labs

From March 2018 to March 2020 the Nordic Smart City Network collaborated on the project ‘Nordic Urban Living Labs’, financed by Nordic Innovation.

The aim with the project was to share best practices for living labs and urban development. By sharing experiences between Smart City Labs in the five Nordic countries new possibilities were created such as scalability for Nordic innovative companies. At the same time, it was also made easier to attract global investment for the development of new Smart City initiatives when the countries joined together on projects and sharing of experience.

Nordic Smart City Network's website demonstrates ways to digitalize cities in the Nordic countries by showing living labs and relevant cases from each city.

People and flow – A Nordic Urban Living Lab project, developed by Copenhagen Solutions Lab in Copenhagen

The project was about gaining knowledge on how new infrastructure (or changes in the city) affects the flow of the city and how people move around the city as pedestrians and cyclists. The aim with the pilot project was to collect flow data in relation to the new metro stations that opened in September 2019 in Copenhagen. We expected that flow data could give the Municipality of Copenhagen a better understanding of the metro’s effect on urban flow. More specifically we needed data on pedestrian- and cyclist routes to and from metro stations. The Municipality also needed data on obstacles and barriers for these road users in order to improve accessibility and walkability.

Read more about the project here
Watch a video about the project People and flows here

Nordic Healhty Cities

Nordic Healthy Cities is the current project in the Nordic Smart City Network and will be running until April 2022. It is also financed by Nordic Innovation.

The aim is to create supportive urban environments and living, to improve health and quality of life. The Nordic Smart City Network will cooperate with private companies to deliver sustainable solutions to deal with the health challenges brought by increased urbanization.

The Nordic Healthy Cities project serves to mitigate and prevent health challenges and set the public sector as a driver of innovation in close partnership with private companies. Efficient urban planning and management practices must be in place to deal with the health and wellbeing challenges brought by urbanization. Data-driven development of the urban environment serves to improve health and the quality of life, as well as functional city developments such as climate protection initiatives.

Nordic Healthy Cities consist of five projects that will test new innovative practices to tackle health effects in future urban areas. Each project is managed by a lead city and a number of participating cities from the Nordic Smart City Network.

Read more about Nordic Healthy Cities and the individual sub-projects here