Fair public financing: German cities push forward with attempts to make subsidy schemes more equitable

This piece was written by Olga Horn, Senior Officer, ICLEI World Secretariat & Daniel Botha, Expert Justice, Equity and Democracy, ICLEI European Secretariat  To expedite the renewable energy transition and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, many cities worldwide provide funding programs to assist residents – for instance in insulating their buildings or installing photovoltaics (PV) on 

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Wiring trees? Smart urban parks are missing the point

This blog post represents the opinions of Olga Horn, Roman Serdar Mendle and Monika Zimmermann, Smart Cities Team, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability _ Urban parks come in many shapes and sizes ranging from small pocket parks to large expanses, but they all serve the key purpose of providing natural settings and ecological functions 

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Paradoxes of a Smart City – Part 3: Open data vs data management

Open data has become an important concept in the Smart Cities debate. By opening up vaults of municipally-generated information, local governments seek to benefit from the power of open data. Smart Cities’ quest for open data while ensuring that it is used and managed appropriately lies at the heart of our third “Paradoxes of a 

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Paradoxes Of A Smart City – Part 2: Integrated Urban Systems vs. Resilience

In our first “Paradoxes of a Smart City” post we explored the Jevons paradox and argued that cities need to ensure that efficiency gains achieved through the deployment of smart solutions are not offset by an increase in absolute resource use. Another potential paradox faced by cities in pursuit of ‘smartness’ concerns systems integration and 

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