Lagos, twenty global cities and Citymart.com announce the LLGA|Cities Pilot the Future programme to discover and implement the most promising solutions that meet pressing social and urban challenges. Over the coming 18 months, the initiative will evaluate around 1,000 submissions and implement real-life pilots in all partner cities to improve the quality of life of their 121 million citizens.

Participating cities vary in population size from less than 100 thousand to 21 million: Aalborg, Barcelona, Boston, Christchurch, Eindhoven, Fukuoka DC, L’Hospitalet, Lagos, Lavasa, London, Mexico, Oulu, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Rosario, San Francisco, Sant Cugat, Sheffield, Tacoma, Terrassa and York.

Challenges are presented by global cities – in partnership with Oracle, the UN Global Compact Cities Programme and The Climate Group – in areas such as mobility, economic development, social inclusion, health & wellbeing, urban management, lighting, energy, culture, future government and sustainable lifestyles. For year 2013 presentation, Lagos is seeking solutions to deliver content seamlessly in bandwidth-challenged environments to provide access to the social and economic benefits of Internet.

In the past three editions, LLGA has attracted 1,519 entries from 70 countries. By providing systematic market intelligence to decision-makers in cities, the program has proven to help cities discover innovative solutions that reach citizens 3 times faster with 80% lower spending.

Pilot and transformations to citizens’ experiences and opportunities can be seen in cities around the

Thousands of citizens in Lagos, working in the world’s third largest movie cluster, will see their livelihoods transformed by eliminating endemic DVD piracy undermining the economy through the Nollywood Upgrade Project.

·        Citizens in Barcelona benefit from more fluid transport through real-time traffic monitoring;

·        San Francisco’s citizens will enjoy more efficient and sustainable urban services thanks to the implementation of a citywide wireless communication network by Paradox Engineering.

Speaking on the awards, Mr. Adebiyi Fatai Mabadeje, Commissioner for Science and Technology and Chairman Lagos Innovation Advisory Council, Lagos State says " We are once again participating in this programme which seeks to promote innovation in service delivery by tapping into the more than 7 billion potential innovators worldwide and hope LLGA  will realize the solution that will best resolve our city’s challenge".

Entries to LLGA can be submitted free of charge until 31 January 2013. A shortlist of the 5 nominated solutions will be presented by each city in March 2013. The solutions selected to implement a pilot will be announced in a Summit in May 2013, hosted by the city of San Francisco. The Summit will bring together the 150 solutions nominated providers selected from over 4,500 candidates, and key

Citymart.com is a global marketplace for cities based in Copenhagen (Denmark) and Barcelona (Spain), working with more than 80 cities and 1,000 companies and research centers in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. Its mission is to open the market for service innovation in cities and overcome key technologcal, organizational  and trade barriers.

Oracle’s City Platform solutions leverage the company’s best-in-class portfolio of products to address complex business processes relevant to the public sector, helping speed time to market, reduce costs and gain a competitive edge. 

The Climate Group is an independent, not-for-profit organization, which brings together a global coalition of the world’s most powerful governments, brands and public figures across Asia, Europe and North America. Since 2004, they’ve been working with governments, business leaders and the world’s most influential individuals -- to push for the policies, technologies and investment we need to make the Clean Revolution commercially viable.

The UN Global Compact Cities Programme was initiated by former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan in 2003. It is a discrete component of the Global Compact, based in Melbourne and New York. The UN Global Compact Cities Programme provides an innovative framework for cities to develop and implement sustainable solutions to urban challenges of a long-term and often intractable nature. It was developed in response to the need to rethink sustainability approaches and to enable meaningful engagement of cities across all their activities—economic, ecological, political and cultural.

http://www.worldstagegroup.com/worldstagenew/index.php?active=news&newscid=6746&catid=44

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