Our flagship event of the year gathered 920 people from over 50 countries around the globe, and 67,000 people were reached over these two days by our social media. Our virtual platform hosting our first annual Summit welcomed 2,284 multiple logins, 74 exhibitors, gave the floor to 71 speakers on 9 and 10 December, and 38 speakers on 11 December for the Partners Networking Day, which was only open to partners and on invitation only.
In total, 10 hours of live video meetings were held. These live meetings have enabled up to 160 connections among the participants to our Summit.
All in all, technology allowed us once again to embrace the extended urban mobility ecosystem from a distance and to exchange insights and views on how we can contribute to make sustainable urban mobility a reality. It has also made clear that “to go fast, you should go alone, but to go far, you should go together. We believe that there is no other way than going fast together to go far”, as EIT Urban Mobility Chief Executive Officer, Maria Tsavachidis stated in her welcoming speech.
We also collected a lot of valuable feedback and many valuable insights from both speakers and participants, that makes us feel more confident about the way to follow to make sustainable urban mobility at the disposal of citizens a reality.
In the morning of 10 December, our audience had the privilege to be the first to hear the Director General of the European Commission for Transport and Mobility debating about the EU´s Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy that had been adopted the day before by the European Commission, which will pave the way towards a mobility compatible with the European climate-neutrality ambition. A strategy supporting urban mobility and making cities more liveable and citizens’ lives easier, as Henrik Hololei, Director General for Mobility and Transport at the European Commission, stated during the institutional session. We certainly understood that “cities need to be the reflection of citizens’ needs”, as Anna Lisa Boni, Secretary General of Eurocities said.
To make all this possible, further collaboration on urban mobility between the public and private sector is needed, as Karima Delli, Chairwoman of the TRAN Committee at the European Parliament, stated. This session has also been the occasion for Mohamed Mezghani, Secretary General of UITP, to describe his vision for the way we will move around in 2030: people in cities will be moving less, move more locally and mainly walk, in cities while the speed limit will be 30 km/h, with less privately-owned cars, and the road will be shared with public transport.
We also had time to reflect on how our unexpected guest of 2020, COVID-19, has impacted our lives and the ways we understand mobility and safety in urban spaces. We learned more about how entrepreneurs and startups have become this year’s heroes by working on developing solutions that could neutralise the spread of the virus.
We explored the views of young researchers on urban mobility. The researchers that are putting their ideas at the disposal of creating solutions that help organisations build more efficient and sustainable means of urban mobility. And we learnt from others who have implemented successful strategies on urban mobility, which will enable cities to provide better mobility opportunities to their citizens.
The golden closing of these very thrilling days was the InnovaCity Awards Final. Innovacity is a 2.5 day hackathon-style workshop providing participants with the essential skills of design thinking and the opportunity to apply these skills while working to solve the biggest mobility challenges became our winner for this year. Amongst all the candidates, it was HelsinKey who won the Innovacity Awards. HelsinKey helps restore people´s trust in public transport with a user engagement platform combining elements of storytelling, communication, and community interaction.
On another note, and running in parallel, on 9 December, Dorine Duives, leader of the CityFlows project, was revealed as the winner of the second prize of the EIT Awards in the category Women Leader and Entrepreneurship. Click here to read more.
The EIT Urban Mobility Summit 2020 is now behind us. This year has taught us how important it is to be connected. Therefore, the EventsAir platform where our summit was hosted, will remain open for some more days, so you will be able to continue to interact with other peers. Presentations and videos will also be made available shortly. Stay tuned!
Once again, on behalf of the EIT Urban Mobility Summit 2020 team, thanks for joining us!
