La Spezia, IT

La Spezia is a city of about 95.000 inhabitants located in the north western part of Italy, in the Liguria Region. Situated on the Ligurian Sea, the city hosts the 3rd most important commercial port in Italy and is a popular tourist destination.

 
Thanks to its harbour, La Spezia is home to one of Italian’s most important cluster for marine technologies (DLTM – Liguria Cluster of Marine Technology) and to a University Pole specialized in nautical engineering. Several national research centers working on marine topics (CNR, ENEA, CSSN, INGV) have also their headquarters in the city. Another important element that contributed to shape the city economy is one of the biggest Italian coal and gas fired power plant (1300 MW of installed capacity producing more than 3% of the total Italian electricity dismissing soon).

 
Besides its participation in the activities of the EU-GUGLE and SINFONIA Replication Cluster, La Spezia has made several commitments to take action in the field of smart and sustainable urban development. In 2015, the municipality presented for instance a masterplan entitled “La Spezia 20.20: the city becomes smart” resulting from a participatory process involving research centers, universities, companies, main local institutions and citizens. Furthermore, the municipality already published some sectorial plans like its Integrated Mobility Plan as well as urban regeneration plans and its Sustainable Energy Action plan was approved in 2012 as the city joined the Covenant of Mayors initiative. Additionally, La Spezia is active in projects regarding Wifi, broadband and urban regeneration financed by European regional development funds, thus showing its commitment to become a smarter city.