Citython 2020 Barcelona: Re-imagining the World

Organized by CARNET (coordinated by CIT UPC) in collaboration with BIT Habitat, with the involvement of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya BarcelonaTech (UPC) and the support of EIT Urban Mobility, Citython 2020 brought together 66 international students and experts from different areas—from data scientists and developers to urban planners— to design the solutions that will help to shape the future of our cities. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all three editions of this year’s Citythons will be held online. The teams are meant to collaborate and coordinate  with mentors in a virtual space to ensure participants’ safety.

All 3 challenges set by the city of Barcelona dealt with COVID-19 and mobility. The pandemic has turned upside-down our lifestyle and reimagining our cities is of great importance to prevent further spreading of the virus and creating a healthy space.   The challenges that participants had to solve through their innovative ideas were:

• Management of high people fluxes areas (ex. beach areas, markets, malls, public space, cultural venues).
• Urban mobility models adjusted to the new safety requirements (pedestrian areas, cycling lines, last miles mobility, optimization of individual mobility).
• Monitoring and improvement of air quality.

For challenge 1, ‘Management of high flux areas’, Team IGOTAG (Dheeraj Raja Kumar, Heriberto Muñoz Vegas, Raghav Aggarwal) won with their presentation of an anonymous ID system that includes a sticker and an app. IGOTAG’s scalable technology allows monitoring high people flux areas without compromising privacy and data protection regulations.

Team Cat.logue (Miguel Navarro, Vanessa Soteldo, Jose Romero, Milica Blagojevic) was the winner for challenge 2: “Urban mobility models adjusted to the new safety requirements”. Team Cat.logue developed a solution based on mathematical floor patterns that helped to regulate social distancing in an innovative and experiential way.

And finally, Team HCHL (Marcel Rosenberg, Laurence Williams, Alejandro Schwartz, Clara Olivier) won the third challenge: ‘Monitoring and improvement of air quality’. Team HCHL developed an algorithm allowing users to move around the city in a safe and healthy way, encouraging sustainable mobility and assuring social distancing while traveling. This is attained through an application that offers routes where with lower pollution levels and density.

With our mindset looking towards a digital future, we are already organizing the next editions, which will again bring new solutions to mobility challenges and reshape the way we move.  Taking place in Lublin (Poland) and Amsterdam (The Netherlands) during September and October 2020, our next Citython editions will come up with new ways and ideas to tackle mobility challenges and transform our cities.