Considering some of the segments that fall under the domain of cities such as traffic, resources (water and energy), health, education, tourism, planned construction using smart materials, administration, it is clear that significant progress and positive changes can be made by improving services through the use of smart technologies and solutions. How do smart solutions function in practice? How to achieve sustainable development of urban environments using innovative, digital, and green solutions was attempted to be answered by the panelists at the last panel of the Lider conference ‘Smart Cities 2023.’
Jasenka Auguštan-Pentek, the mayor of Zlatar, initially stated that Zlatar has only recently adopted a smart city strategy and that as a small town, they are taking steps towards becoming a smart city. Among the ‘smart solutions’ available in Zlatar, the mayor mentioned smart lighting and a ‘palm application’ that allows citizens to report municipal issues. She also highlighted financial transparency towards citizens as an important aspect, noting that they started this practice back in 2020.
The panel also included Dario Hrebak, the mayor of Bjelovar, who stated that Bjelovar is becoming a sort of IT zone, as the number of IT companies has increased by 40 percent and that the city is doing everything to strengthen this sector. – IT has exploded here, we have reached 500 jobs in that sector – said Hrebak.
He emphasized that when talking about a smart city, one should also think about sustainable tax policies. For this reason, Hrebak said, in Bjelovar they have ‘cut’ all the taxes they could and abolished the surtax, which has led to more investments. He also mentioned geothermal energy, for which the region is known, and said they plan to ‘open’ four out of five wells in the next ten years.
Tomislav Marić from the company Odašiljači i veze touched on the infrastructure that is essential for smart cities to function, emphasizing that without infrastructure, there is no smart city. He stated that the company decided to focus on infrastructure due to ‘in-house’ knowledge and technology. For this reason, the company was chosen to lead the project for the development of broadband infrastructure in areas where no commercial interest has been shown so far. Goran Težak from the company Lama spoke about new technologies, specifically blockchain, and mentioned that they have already developed an application called Blockademia that operates on blockchain and is used for document verification.
It is important to apply on time
In the second part of the last panel, the mayors of Labin Valter Glavičić, the mayor of Makarska Zoran Paunović, Ivan Bilać from the company ECCOS, and Aleksandar Halavanja from the Environmental Protection and Energy Efficiency Fund participated.
According to the mayor of Makarska, this Dalmatian city has visibly transformed in the last year and a half, at least regarding digitalization. In mid-2021, Makarska did not have even the most basic digital tools such as online banking, and today it is continuously working on the digitalization of the entire city administration.
