On the way to becoming a smart city, it is essential to establish new administrative structures and participation formats. A modern city is characterised by accelerated and simple administrative processes, innovative services as well as transparency and citizen friendliness. The field of action includes topics such as e-government, participation of the urban society, citizens’ telephone 115, the "ServiceStadt Berlin" modernisation programme, Open Data, social integration, art, and culture.
Smart Living
Berlin is a polycenter with a variety of quarters with different building structures, residential locations and residential qualities as well as a diverse public and private infrastructure. Preserving and further developing socially and demographically mixed neighbourhoods is a central future task to which residents, the housing industry, private service providers, social welfare organisations, associations and neighbourhood initiatives, together with politicians and administrators, contribute significantly. In particular the development of new urban districts offers excellent opportunities to try out innovative concepts for numerous fields of application such as smart homes, building efficiency and security, green spaces and open spaces.
Smart Business
Smart business means cooperation between research institutions, universities and companies. The products and services for successful innovations can best be developed on an interdisciplinary basis, especially at the interfaces of ICT, energy technology, health and transport/mobility. Targeted funding policy is intended to bring together sectors and companies which do not usually work together but benefit from cooperation. This creates a smart link between different domains. The field of action includes - among others - the following topics: Berlin's future locations, electromobility, start-ups, demand for innovations as well as international cooperation and Industry 4.0.
Smarte Mobility
Mobility is a prerequisite for social participation. The population depends on being able to travel as smoothly as possible in professional and private life. For companies, the reliable and efficient supply of goods and merchandise and the disposal of private and commercial waste and residual materials play a central role. Ensuring mobility is therefore of particular importance in Berlin; it should be socially equitable, adapted to ecological and economic conditions and developed with a view to the future. Relevant subject areas therefore include the "city of short distances", sharing offers and self-determined mobility, integrated traffic concepts, electromobility and network integration, traffic control and traffic safety as well as urban logistics.
Smart Infrastructures
Intelligently designed supply infrastructures form the backbone of Smart City Berlin. The city has set itself the goal of becoming CO2-neutral by 2050. This can only be achieved by means of comprehensive, intelligent solutions. The aim is to harmonise urban development structures and network infrastructures with the focus on a sustainable and climate-neutral city and to optimise these both economically and ecologically. The recycling economy is an essential component of this transition, which can develop energy, heat and raw material recovery by means of innovative approaches and new urban technologies. Smart grids in a variety of forms are a core element of future infrastructures, paving the way for greater sustainability and environmental protection.
Public Security
Smart City Berlin must be secure in order to guarantee the robustness of the overall system, which is subject to greater sensitivity as a result of increasing networking. However, it can only live up to this claim if appropriate security concepts are designed and applied. Berlin understands public security to mean both protection against deliberately caused damage and protection against natural disasters. Security is one of the public core tasks which is particularly important to the Berlin Senate, but which can only be implemented in close cooperation with the responsible authorities and the population. Special emphasis is placed on security aspects such as data integrity, data authenticity and the availability of data even in times of crisis. If these latter aspects are not guaranteed, the functionality of existing systems can be fundamentally questioned.
Smart City Berlin - the future starts here
Berlin has coped with an amazing development in the past decades. After the upheavals of the 1990s, the city has now become a hot spot. Berlin owes this to the creativity, spontaneity and unconventionality of its citizens, the innovative strength of its companies, and an urban spirit which makes many things possible.
Berlin - like many other cities worldwide - will thus have to face new challenges, accompanied by considerable changes in the living and working environments of all those involved. A growing city must deal with the consequences of climate change, energy and mobility change, more sustainability and efficiency, increasing demands on infrastructures of all kinds as well as demographic and administrative challenges. With the existing instruments and familiar ways of working and cooperating, we will only be able to master this with considerable additional effort, if indeed at all.
New forms of cooperation between all participants, new ways of thinking and acting as well as a culture of trust and benevolence are required - the intelligent city of tomorrow is in demand. Berlin has set out to become this intelligent city - a Smart City. Our vision is to shape Berlin into an intelligently networked, future-oriented, post-fossil and resilient city for the benefit of an educated, tolerant and creative society. A high quality of life, cosmopolitan attitude and citizen-oriented politics should continue to make Berlin an urban attraction.
The city does not claim to be able to master this in a short time. Many changes are imperative and so fundamental that they require careful handling so that nobody is left out in the cold – whether urban society, business, research or politics. Berlin is an ongoing transformation which manifests itself in many places, projects and activities and in which citizens and their needs are at the centre of responsible action. Berlin can score points by making space for diversity, for experiments and, above all, for creating something completely new.
Smart City Berlin actively shapes the transformation process and the framework conditions. Many players, many activities provide a colourful picture of intelligent innovations and form the basis for a future-oriented city of tomorrow.