#connectedinEurope: Krefeld connects as a Smart City in many directions

Krefeld originally started a joint tandem with the city of Sofia (Bulgaria)  in #connectedinEurope. In the first year, the cities mainly exchanged ideas on smart participation opportunities, for example through co-creative participation formats or digital platforms. Sofia then left the programme at the end of 2023 following changes in its administration. Krefeld, however, knew how to turn this situation into a new momentum by henceforth flexibly docking to other #connectedinEurope tandems and by seeking exchange with its own formal partner city Venlo (Netherlands) on smart city topics.

It is no surprise then that Krefeld leveraged the networking effects of a programme like #connectedinEurope exceptionally well. In the exchange with Venlo they carved out how the cross-border desk sharing between the municipalities introduced several years ago can be conceptualized as an institutional innovation for smart city development: Each city sends one or two people to the partner city, who work on site in Krefeld and Venlo at dedicated intervals. Thanks to the technical possibilities of mobile working, it is also possible to work on one's own topics from elsewhere. These people then also act as ideal contact points between the municipalities and can be consulted directly in the other administration for questions and project ideas relating to the partner city. It is an arrangement that can significantly reduce transaction costs in the coordination and cooperation of (geographically close) municipal partnerships.

Krefeld also decided to follow the interoperability test between the urban digital twins of the cities of Utrecht and Munich and plans to experiment with the Utrecht solution for urban 3D visualisations. And it is through this "detour" via the partner city in Germany that Venlo learnt about the easy opt-in to Netherlands3D as a joint project between municipalities in its own country.

Through the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ, German International Cooperation Agency) which was responsible for the implementation of #connectedinEurope, the municipalities got also introduced to the Experts Fund for Municipal Partnerships Worldwide. Krefeld responded swiftly with an application for an expert assignment to help shaping their recently founded partnership with the Ukrainian city of Kropyvnytskyi, and was fortunately successful. In addition to economic development, climate action and waste management, the focus was also put on urban digitalisation for this arrangement.

Fully in line with these works of developing linkages Krefeld then also put the Smart City topic on the agenda of the 6th North Rhine-Westphalian-Dutch Boderland Conference (Grenzlandkonferenz), for which it was the host city. As a replacement for the usual "tandem meeting" with your partner city from #connectedinEurope, Krefeld could seek the exchange with multiple Dutch and German cities at a time. Dedicated workshops offered an overview of Krefeld's smart city activities and the programme of #connectedinEurope before discussing how smart city approaches and projects can be made more regionally and spatially integrated. 
Often participants expressed the streamlining of digital processes across the border as a first fundament, e.g. with regard to the recording and provision of spatial data. Moreover, proposals were raised to jointly integrate plans for data centre into urban and regional planning. The reference to the "EULE" project for developing drone corridors to transport medical goods, and which is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport, also caught broad interest. Last but not least, participants also talked about possibilities of cross-border cooperation to use digital tools for the acquisition of the neighbour's language.

This led to data-driven urban and regional development being highlighted as another topic for the future, next to the already well established issues of the Borderland Conference like education, crisis prevention and security, rounding off Krefeld's great engagement for European smart city exchange.