Mesa Innovación y digitalización
Working Group 8
Innovation and Digitalisation
The challenges of contemporary urbanism call for new approaches, and Madrid has the opportunity to lead a new city model based on data, technology, and innovation.
The Innovation and Digitalisation Working Group was created as a key space to imagine the future of Madrid from a technological and transformative perspective, and to address the challenge of making innovation a driver of change in urban planning, supporting a smart, adaptable, people-centred city model. The group worked from a dual perspective: a tactical one, focused on the City Council’s current capacity to manage data and digital tools; and a strategic one, aimed at exploring emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, digital twins, and 3D urban modelling. The shared vision sees planning as a living, participatory process, based on real-time data, interoperability, and scenario simulation, one that can give the city intelligence, resilience, and foresight.
Participants
The Innovation and Digitalisation Working Group brought together around 150 participants and identified as a central need the transformation of Madrid’s urban planning towards a dynamic, data-driven, and citizen-participatory model. It highlighted the urgent need for a robust digital infrastructure capable of integrating, analysing, and visualising real-time data, making informed and adaptive decision-making possible. Among the priorities are the creation of an interoperable digital map, the development of urban simulators to anticipate future scenarios, and the implementation of technological tools such as artificial intelligence, digital twins, and automated urban rules engines. The group also stressed the importance of establishing a single municipal data repository, supported by clear governance and standardised processes, and proposed moving forward with a phased roadmap based on concrete use cases, while fostering agile public-private collaboration that can overcome bureaucratic barriers.
Ideas discussed
This working group brought together representatives from institutional, technical, academic, and private-sector backgrounds, who called for planning based on data, with dynamic diagnoses, measurable goals, and accountability. The group debated the use of strategic simulators, artificial intelligence, and citizen science, and defended a flexible, modular, and progressive approach to technology that allows the system to be updated as urban reality evolves. For that reason, it proposed thinking of Madrid as a future urban laboratory, capable of managing connectivity, adapting to new technologies such as 5G and autonomous vehicles, and ensuring an ethical and inclusive use of technology in the service of citizens. In short, the group concluded that technology can become a transformative force for Madrid’s urbanism, starting from a vision of planning as a living, flexible, data-driven process.
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