Cities today face mounting pressures to do more with fewer resources, from cutting emissions and adapting to climate risks to improving urban livability. Simultaneously, digital technologies, including AI, are reshaping urban life, impacting mobility, energy management, public services, and civic engagement. The most successful transformations come when these green and digital shifts are integrated, creating urban systems that are both sustainable and technologically advanced.
However, technology alone is not enough. True transformation requires collaboration between city administrations, entrepreneurs, and innovators to design, test, and scale solutions with real impact. At KosICT25, UNDP highlighted how shared vision and partnerships, rather than individual tools, are the drivers of meaningful change, emphasizing the need for cities to move from short-term project thinking to long-term systems approaches.
Entrepreneurs bring creativity and agility, but cities must engage them early and openly share challenges to foster relevant solutions. Data, collected daily by municipalities, companies, and residents, is another critical resource. When responsibly shared, it empowers cities and innovators to make informed decisions and build solutions that address real community needs.
Across Europe, many cities are pioneering new collaboration models. Urban Innovation Sandboxes in Barcelona, Torino City Lab, and Amsterdam Smart City demonstrate how cities can work with innovators to co-create solutions. Similar efforts are emerging in Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans. In Pristina, public–private collaboration pilots like OmniRep, an app for reporting illegally parked vehicles, show how citizen-focused solutions can improve city management. Ukraine’s GovTech Lab further illustrates how startups can directly work with government institutions to test, refine, and scale solutions, even during crises.
These examples highlight a broader shift: urban transformation depends on the partnership between those setting strategic visions and those providing the technological tools to implement them. To support such collaboration, UNDP and the City Experiment Fund, through the BOOST accelerator, launched an open call for urban green tech solutions. This initiative connects cities with innovators to co-develop scalable, real-world solutions for cleaner, smarter, and more resilient urban systems, fostering experimentation and shared success.
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