Shanghai to hold summit on global smart city cooperation and development

How to make our cities smarter? This seems to be the key question that draws officials, experts and business representatives to share practices, insights and contribute wisdom for the upcoming Global Smart City Cooperation and Development Summit in east China's Shanghai.

Themed Bridging Global Smart Cities, the two-day event will kick off on November 8, bridging ideas on digital transformation and smart city construction in online and offline ways while providing a platform for international communication and cooperation.

The buzz word "smart city" has gained further importance along with digitalization progress and people-centered city governance philosophy, and a number of smart city signature projects with local characteristics have taken shape in cities such as Shanghai, Beijing and Hangzhou.

Shanghai is also striving to build itself into a global smart city pioneer, and an international digital economy hub by 2022 according to the previously released guidelines on speeding up smart city construction.

Shanghai has put the upgraded "one net for all" service platform in place for the ongoing fifth China International Import Expo (CIIE), for instance, integrating CIIE data to improve command and support for the international event.

Meanwhile, city governance capability is also facing challenges amid factors such as the lingering pandemic, climate change and urbanization, which calls for solutions in areas of city positioning, city functions, city structure adjustments, city image and features in new context of new generation information technology.

It is noted that the summit is hosted by the Council for the Promotion of International Trade (Shanghai), the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), and supported by Xinhua News Agency Shanghai division and China Economic Information Service, an economic information service provider affiliated with Xinhua News Agency.