EVENTS Milan and Tel Aviv, Partners in Innovation
By Daniel Reichel
Innovation and a strong involvement of the citizens in urban life are only some of the issues which the sister cities of Milan and Tel Aviv are working on together.
Tel Aviv is becoming more and more an international example of a new concept of city: the World Smart City award that Tel Aviv Municipality recently received is the acknowledgement of this new spirit. This way of rethinking the ways of life in the city was presented to the Italian public during an event at the Israeli Pavilion at Milan EXPO 2015.
“We are the Start-up city of the start-up nation,” said the mayor of Tel Aviv Ron Huldai, who visited Milan and met the city mayor Giuliano Pisapia (in the picture, Huldai and Pisapia with Ruggero Gabbai, the president of the EXPO Committee of the Municipality of Milan). . “We are proud to be here in Israel Pavilion at EXPO 2015,” added Hila Oren, CEO of Global Tel Aviv. “In past years Tel Aviv has managed to become one of the smart city benchmarks of the planet through innovation, involvement of citizens and a way of thinking ‘out of the box’. Today our Smart City is open to the world to share our story and to support other cities in their growth with our example and expertise”.
During the event, the speakers introduced both the Cities summit Tel Aviv (September 7-9) and the competition dedicated to the start-up world. Among those attending it were also the Israeli Ambassador to Italy Naor Gilon and the deputy mayor of Milan and councilor for Economic Development of Municipality Cristina Tajani. Tajani hightlighted how the city hosting EXPO 2015 is very committed to facilitating new business ideas, hosting no less than five incubators. “Moreover, in order to promote the sharing economy,” said Tajani “we are creating a public crowdfunding platform and we are supporting public venues for co-working.”
Milan has also become the project leader of Smart Food City, a program joined by 46 cities, including Tel Aviv, that on October 15-16 will focus on developing a set of policies for sustainable food production and consumption, nutrition education and fighting foodwaste.