Sant Cugat is set in a unique natural environment with 2,113 hectares of parkland and almost 1 million square meters of green urban areas, 50,000 urban trees making 1.4 trees per inhabitant. We have a young, international population with a diverse range of talent concentrated around the university, business and research-based knowledge. Life is based around city parks, bike paths, modern sports facilities and efficient, sustainable services.

In its Europe 2020 program, the EU developed a strategic framework to boost the growth of smart, inclusive and sustainable cities. Within this context and at a time of great economic difficulty, the City of Sant Cugat has defined the Strategic Smart City Plan, a new initiative to manage resources efficiently, to reduce the cost of maintaining the quality of life, services and environment of the city, and to enhance the economic competitiveness of the city.

As part of this Plan, Sant Cugat is seeking ways to capitalise on under-utilised spaces and use them to create economic growth, to help integrate the young unemployed and others at risk of exclusion and generate revenue to fund the maintenance of public space.

We are looking for activities to maximise on underused spaces (parks, markets, rooftops, sports facilities, streets, etc) and discover new spaces in the city. These activities might include commercial, urban-gaming, educational, cultural, tourist and socially inclusive initiatives. We are also interested in ways of collecting data and classifying the spaces, creating an inventory and providing citizen access with reservation and regulation models. Solutions should enable Sant Cugat to take one more step towards being a sustainable Smart Community.