Gothenburg aka Göteborg the 400-year-old city in Sweden has many plans ranging from building more houses, environment-friendly houses, experimenting with fossil-free fuels for transport, and developing abandoned parts of the city such as Frihamnen.
Gothenburg Business Region organized a seminar titled ‘Smart City’: Take the lead in the race for smart and sustainable cities on 20 June at the Race Village at Frihamnen where the industry leaders from Volvo to political leaders from Göteborgs Stad or the City of Gothenburg participated and shared their vision and plans that are underway in automation, e-mobility and autonomous vehicles.
Ulf Kamne, deputy mayor of the City of Gothenburg, or, vice ördförande av Göteborgs Stad, talks to www.gothenburg-400.com, at a seminar on SMART CITY organised by Gothenburg Business Region, about the challenges the city is facing, the need for the local government, to listen to the people, the future of the city, how Gothenburg is catching up to be a fossil-free city with its test-bed centres, and how the city is ahead of many European cities … Listen to the podcast:
Ulf Kamne at the seminar and shared the vision of the city in making the city sustainable and greener among others. He said, the city is performing exceedingly well in terms of its finances, a fact accepted and appreciated by the Swedish Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson, but the challenge is to ensure the vision of the city unfolds according to the plan, and the acceptance from the residents.
“It will be the public acceptance that is one thing we have to be aware of and change plans to make people like it. You don’t have to tell them this is good but you have to listen to them and change plans. Maybe sometimes we are very optimistic and make plans very big and we should scale them down a little bit and we have to be very thoughtful and cautious to point out for example where we are now in Frihamnen,” Ulf Kamne said. He said, the city is also ahead of many other European cities in implementing green or environment-friendly initiatives in order to make Gothenburg the Smart City.
