Now is the time to put forward smart city ideas for Brussels

Residents and visitors to Brussels-Capital region can submit suggestions and projects to enhance the smart city profile of the Belgian capital and the surrounding municipalities

Brussels Smart City has just launched an invitation for contributions with citizens’ ideas to making the municipalities within the region more “intelligent”. Open to all residents and visitors to Brussels-Capital Region (the bilingual mid-Belgium region composed of 19 municipalities, including the Capital), the suggestion box is accepting ideas online.

The process of submission is fairly easy: within several minutes you can describe how an issue could be resolved in a smart way, suggest smarter approaches to various aspects of common living and illustrate it with graphic materials. Visitors to the site can submit ideas as citizens or as enterprises or self-employed in one of the following categories: quality of life, mobility, society, government, environment, economy or general. The suggestions are then subject to rejection or publishing as accepted.

But what exactly is the smart city? Briefly, it is a city that meets most of the urban challenges with intelligent approach, based on data, therefore: is much more efficient. This necessarily involves strong collaboration between public institutions with different responsibilities, innovative thinking from decision-makers’ side, but also citizens and business, integrative and participatory approaches to everyone’s needs, however different they might be. And finally – smart cities are simple and productive. These main characteristics ultimately lead to a more sustainable living, while saving resources and mitigating the negative effects to the environment.

So, knowing what the smart city represents, you are certainly able to come up with ingenious solutions to everyday living. Have your say on how to make Brussels more intelligent now.