Valencia will allocate 100,000 euros to the best innovation project that impacts the Valencia Neutral City Mission

• The objective of the 2030 Valencia Urban Strategy is to achieve a healthier, sustainable, shared, prosperous, Mediterranean and creative city.
• Valencia’s first mission is to be one of the first 100 climate-neutral cities in Europe by 2030.
• The 100,000 euros of the prize obtained last year as a finalist for the European Capital of Innovation will be used to finance an international call in 2021 to select the best innovation project that demonstrates the greatest and broadest impact on our first Valencia Neutral City Mission.

The Las Naves innovation centre, of Valencia City Council, celebrated the World Day of Creativity and Innovation with an online event, organised jointly with the Innpulso Network, in which the Urban Agenda of the city for 2030 was presented, featuring missions and resilience, and in which an international call was announced in 2021 to select the best innovation project that demonstrates the greatest and broadest impact in our first Valencia Neutral City Mission.

The one-day event was opened by the mayor, Joan Ribó, the Minister for Science and Innovation, Pedro Duque, and the General Secretary of the Urban Agenda, Francisco David Lucas.

The mayor of Valencia, Joan Ribó, explained that “the 2030 Valencia Urban Strategy integrates the Urban Agenda, the innovation missions and the pandemic recovery framework. We are looking for a model of a Mediterranean city that reflects on the city we aspire to for the next decade. One of the missions proposed by Europe is to have 100 climate neutral cities by 2030. And we have signed up for that mission in Valencia and we have approved it in a plenary session of the City Council”.

The Minister of Science and Innovation, Pedro Duque, stressed that “one of the great challenges is climate change, and cities have an essential responsibility. And the mission of having 100 climate-neutral cities, which Valencia is going to join, is a goal that we share in Spain”. “I want to thank Valencia City Council, Las Naves and the Innpulso Network for their commitment because they are a source of hope for all”, Duque concluded.

The Councillor for Innovation of Valencia City Council, Carlos Galiana, announced during the event that the 100,000 euros received of the European prize as a finalist for the 2020 European Capital of Innovation will be used to finance an international call in 2021 to select the best innovation project that demonstrates the greatest and broadest impact on our first Valencia Neutral City Mission. We will call this international call to innovation ‘Valencia: City of Innovation”.

The 2030 Valencia Urban Strategy presented this morning has three main vectors, which Jordi Peris, coordinator of Urban Strategies of Valencia City Council, developed in his presentation: “Our urban agenda takes concrete form firstly with the commitment to the SDGs in the field of cities and that gives us consensual international reference points, recognising the value of the Mediterranean city. As a second vector, we accept that we are facing challenges to which there are no valid solutions and that we must construct collectively, in a way that only innovation allows us to do. And the third vector of our urban strategy is the recovery from the pandemic that incorporates the perspective of resilience in cities”.

Fermín Cerezo, Head of the Innovation service of Valencia City Council, added that “we are going to have 6 missions until 2030 that will improve people’s lives, with 3 main objectives: to model the city’s innovation effort, to bring the great challenges of humanity to people’s daily lives, and to challenge the talent of the ecosystem to help us on this collective journey”.

During the event, the inspirational talk titled “What does innovation bring to the urban agenda and vice versa”, was given by Julio Lumbreras (Polytechnic University of Madrid). This was followed by a round table, moderated by Rosalía Herrera, director general of Ermua City Council and secretary of the Innpulso Network, which discussed how to articulate the Urban Agendas and Innovation, from the viewpoint of several cities in Spain: Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, Zaragoza and Valladolid.

Carles Ruiz, mayor of Viladecans and co-president of the Innpulso Network, valued the work of Valencia in innovation: “The path taken by Valencia is an example that economic growth can be achieved by facing social challenges through innovation”.

The event was closed by Pilar Bernabé, Councillor for Entrepreneurship and Economic Innovation, and Carlos Galiana, Councillor for Innovation and Knowledge Management of Valencia City Council. Bernabé took the opportunity of her intervention to highlight the Valencia Tech City project, “based on public-private collaboration and how to scale up the talent of our productive sector, in order to improve our capacities. It is key to share and transfer knowledge and to overcome existing gender gaps in the process”.