Tampere Aims for European Innovation Capital

Tampere is participating in the European Capital of Innovation competition in its main category, which is intended for cities with over 250,000 inhabitants. Tampere's strong roots in innovation and technology, its smart infrastructure with digital solutions, and its atmosphere that encourages experimentation are the city's strengths in the competition. Tampere aims to be an internationally leading city in sustainable and urban metaverse development.

The main prize of the competition is one million euros, while two cities placing second will each be awarded 100,000 euros.
 

The competition assesses the innovativeness and scalability of cities' smart solutions

Tampere's international visibility as an innovative developer of smart technological solutions can bring collaboration opportunities for local businesses and result in smoother services for residents. Tampere's strengths include close cooperation with businesses, other cities, and research institutions. Last week, the Imagine the Metaverse event attracted experts from 33 different countries to Tampere.

– We entered the competition because we have concrete examples of creative and people-centric use of data and smart technology. These achievements have already sparked international interest due to their scalability and innovativeness. An example is much-requested Tampere Pulse service, which provides data on downtown visitor flows to local businesses, says Irene Impiö, Director of Growth Services at the City of Tampere.

The competition evaluates cities' achievements in experimentation, collaborative networks, the scalability of smart solutions, and future visions.

Tampere is taking a leadership role in leveraging technology for the benefit of climate and city residents

– Tampere dares to take a leadership role in the development of the metaverse. We have just started leading the negotiation phase of the Europe-wide x-CITE project, which aims to build a European metaverse for cities, CitiVerse. We already have implemented solutions, technological platforms, expertise, and just the right amount of curiosity, says Teppo Rantanen, Director at the City of Tampere.

Tampere's competition application highlights initiatives such as the SURE program, which develops intelligent event safety solutions, smart lighting solutions using city technology, and sensor systems that facilitate road maintenance. Many of these examples are based on the city's IoT platform, which serves as the city's centralized data hub. The application also introduces the x-CITE project and its goals to utilize extended reality (XR) solutions, including creating experiences at venues such as Nokia Arena.

Sustainability, social diversity, and equality are integral parts of Tampere's message in the European competition. Sustainability includes smart mobility solutions such as the tram project and Tampere's autonomous driving laboratory.

– Tampere innovatively utilizes data to promote social equality. An example of this is the Tampere Junior development program, where data was collected on local families to better target services to their needs, Rantanen explains.

The evaluation results of the applications submitted to the competition will be announced in November-December.