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What does it mean to build a city that’s not just connected – but intelligent, inclusive, and visionary?

The WideningImpacts Spring 2025 Webinar Series is finishing strong with its final session featuring the METACITIES Excellence Hub!

The METACITIES project explores exactly that – bringing together a diverse community of stakeholders, from researchers and policymakers to urban planners and innovators, to reimagine how cities across South-Eastern Europe can grow and thrive through smart technologies, sustainable design, and cross-border collaboration.

📅 27 June 2025
🕙 11:00 – 12:00 (Athens time)
🌆 METACITIES’ Story: From Idea Conception to Post-Project Ambitions and Vision  
🔗 Registration is free, but required [Microsoft Virtual Events Powered by Teams ]

💡 Join us to discuss how cities are not just built for us, but with us!

Details

METACITIES Excellence Hub in South-Eastern Europe is a European Union Excellence Hubs (EH) project funded under the Horizon WIDERA call. The objectives for this webinar are to:

• Support the formation of an EH Community;
• Increase awareness of and support for METACITIES specifically, and EH projects and the Widening Programme more generally;
• Catalyze new collaborations;
• Disseminate best-practices and lessons-learned from elaborating the METACITIES proposal and executing the METACITIES project.

The primary target audiences are:

• Other EH projects and their external stakeholders;
• Stakeholders involved in smart cities and future cities, urban & regional planning, digital and network technologies, innovation & research, smart mobility and green & sustainable development;
• Stakeholders for the EU Widening Program, including those with interests / activities in writing EU proposals and executing EU projects.

The webinar will begin with the proposal background that led to the METACITIES concept and consortium creation, cover the execution of the project to date, the activities in each innovation ecosystem, cross-border collaboration, tools that can be used by other cities, and will conclude with the post-project ambitions and vision. The webinar will include key characteristics of the project including lessons-learned and how the consortium will convert the challenges into solutions. The webinar is intended to consist of a ~35 min. presentation and ~15 min. of Q&A and open discussion.