SYNCHRO SPACE 2020: innovators from 5 continents come together for urban development

The international event SYNCHRO SPACE 2020 took place on November 21, last Saturday.  Startups, representatives of cities and international organizations, and experts in urban planning, technology, and sustainable development attended this event.

This year, thanks to the online format, the geography of SYNCHRO SPACE events has significantly expanded. The event was attended by representatives from various cities of Ukraine and the UAE, USA, Spain, Colombia, Taiwan, Nigeria, Thailand, South Africa, Mexico, and Austria.

SYNCHRO SPACE moves towards its goal - to create our cities of the future continues to unite like-minded people and specialists of different specialties to develop innovative solutions for the cities of Ukraine and the world.

"We believe in the power of collaboration, the implementation of international experience, and the ability to implement urban hackathon solutions in cities," said Victoria Yashkina, National Coordinator of the EU4Climate Project, UNDP.

This year the SYNCHRO SPACE 2020 event became a platform for discussions in which participated the founder of SYNCHRO SPACE Alisa Bankovska, the Ambassador of the Netherlands to Ukraine Jennes de Mol, National Coordinator of the EU4Climate Project Victoria Yashkina, the President of FIABCI-Ukraine Dmytro Kovganich, the founder of WorldStartup Vendry CE Gerrit Jan van't't Petrunin. The speakers discussed the possibilities of exchanging experiences between countries and between different specialists in solving problems of sustainable urban development.

The discussion panel on the topic "How can Ukrainian cities compete on a global level" was also exciting and dynamic. Volodymyr Pirus, Iryna Ozymok, Oleksandr Slobozhan, and Serhiy Loboyko took part in the discussion. Speakers were talking about the role of strategy for the city, ways to attract investment, ensure the competitiveness of cities according to the requirements of sustainable development and the benefits of smart solutions, investment in e-democracy, and data-driven governance.

"Urban development strategy should include socio-economic development, infrastructure, transport, security, environmental and artistic components, smart city tools. We should take trends such as globalization, urbanization and all the challenges involved into account." - said Vladimir Pirus.

The pearl of the program was a lecture block, where the speakers-innovators shared practical cases of creating smart solutions: Laura P. Spinadel - architect, urban planning expert (Austria), Dmytro Aranchiy - founder of Dmytro Aranchii Architects, Victoria Yashkina and Andriy Vavrysh - developer, founder and CEO of SAGA Development. The guests of the event learned about Austrian cases of creating comfortable urban spaces, futuristic and at the same time functional smart projects for cities, nature-oriented solutions, and cases of sustainable projects in the historic environment.

The online format allowed real-time communication with FIABCI influencers from 5 continents: Mahmoud Al Burai (UAE), Suzan Greenfield (USA), Ramon Riera (Spain), Andres Correa (Colombia), Dr. Shwu-Ting Lee (Taiwan), Gbenga Ismail (Nigeria), Sopon Pornchokchai (Thailand), Bryan Chaplog (South Africa) and Antonio Hanna Grayeb (Mexico).

As part of FIABCI-UKRAINE SYNCHRO SPACE AWARD 2020, eleven Ukrainian startups presented their decisions to an international jury: Saveecobot, YourAirTest, Sculpture Eco Park, L-Sonar, ZVIDSY, UUM, Waste Ukraine Analytics, WheelKeep, iDev, Travelike, SoftUUp.

According to international experts' results, the teams who won are SoftUUp, Sculpture Eco Park and WheelKeep won. This means the ability to scale these solutions in cities in other countries. The winners will receive valuable gifts from partners: ISE - Innovation Startup Entrepreneurship, Fabricator / FabLab, SAGA Development and iHUB.

The highlight of the event was a discussion panel on how technology will change our cities. Modern Ukrainian innovators attended the discussion: Vitaliy Honcharuk - CEO / founder at Augmented Pixels, Roman Zinchenko - co-founder of Greencubator and Chairman of the UVCA Energy Committee, Dmytro Aranchii - an expert in architectural design and Andriy Chakhoyan - founder and CEO Strategic Narrative, moderator of this panel.

The event was organized by SYNCHRO SPACE and FIABCI-UKRAINE with the support of the UNDP Innovative Development Laboratory and the Embassy of the Netherlands in Ukraine.

SYNCHRO SPACE influences cities' future, uniting like-minded people and creating conditions for the development and implementation of innovative projects. Despite the new circumstances in which Ukraine and the whole world found themselves, the synchro-year 2020 was busy and brought many new urban development opportunities. Today, we can share experiences with other countries and understand that there are no borders or restrictions for innovation.

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