Sarajevo City Delegation participated last week in the “8 Mini Economic Forum” organized by Matica BiH and “Bi-City Workshop” at ETH Zürich, the most prominent European technical institute which won 21 Nobel prizes.
Bosnian and Swiss partners met and discussed the topics of digitalization, technological development and creation of smart, sustainable and inclusive cities.
It was concluded that, apart from the exchange of know-how and knowledge, there was a need to identify specific implementation projects as a base for future year-long cooperation with the aim of creating future strategic digital urban vision for the City of Sarajevo, and innovative pilot projects in the field of integrated urbanism and architecture (cable car as public transport, mobility, museums and public cultural institutions, campuses etc.) in accordance with the priorities of the City and Canton with broad participation of experts and citizens.
The City Administration together with the Mayor Abdulah Skaka has made official the technical cooperation between Switzerland and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the second half of 2017 through cooperation on the project “Reactivate Sarajevo City Action Lab” with several partners including the Think Tank ETH Zurich”, under the leadership of professors Brillembourg and Klumpner and doctoral candidate Haris Piplaš.The project partners also include the City of Zurich, which ranked second in quality of city life in the Mercer survey; and Matica BiH from Zurich, which gathers BiH citizens in Switzerland who wish to contribute to the development of BiH. The project was supported by SECO (Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs) and Swiss embassy in BiH.
The group of local and international partners will enable the promotion of the City of Sarajevo at the global level and increase the standard of living for the citizens. The decision on the pilot project should be made at the next meeting planned for January 2019 in Sarajevo. Further information on the project can be found at the Reactivate Sarajevo Facebook page and web pages of U-TT and ETH Zurich.
