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Good practice Imported

Barcelona Innova: Strategy for Boosting Urban Innovation in Barcelona

Spain · Barcelona · See the Spain profile · See the Barcelona profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 34% 76/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

This government measure formalizes and shapes the strategy of promoting innovation in the city as a means of leverage for transformation and acceleration to improve people’s quality of life, fight climate change and foster urban resilience.

6.6 € million
Programme resources (2021-2023)
40,000 jobs
Projected new jobs from Barcelona Innovation Coast (by 2030 (projected))
700+
Innovative startups hosted in Barcelona (2024-2025)
Barcelona Innova: Strategy for Boosting Urban Innovation in Barcelona

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Barcelona City Council Commissioner for Digital Innovation, e-Government and Good Governance; BIT Habitat
Period
October 2021-present (until 2025)
Region (NUTS)
ES51
Keywords
city as a lab, tech, digital transition, smart city, green transition, urban resilience, training and skills acquisition

Context

Barcelona Innova is a Barcelona City Council government measure (October 2021–present) formalising the city's strategy for promoting innovation as a lever for improving quality of life, fighting climate change and building urban resilience. It is coordinated through the Barcelona Urban Innovation Platform (PIU) and the BIT Habitat foundation, involving City Council departments (Economy and Economic Promotion/Barcelona Activa, Urban Planning, Democratic Innovation, Innovation and Digital Transition, Social Innovation, Mobility and Infrastructures) and Fira de Barcelona.

Objectives

The strategy's stated objectives are: internal innovation within the City Council; innovation across the wider ecosystem and with residents; structuring innovation in public management; and accelerating innovation by positioning the city as an experimentation space.

Activities

Actions include consolidating BIT Habitat as the city's innovation tool, training City Council staff, creating an 'innovation officer' role, involving the innovation ecosystem in council decisions, supporting public-private-community partnerships, launching urban challenges, running the public Fab Lab Network, and operating the Urban Data Desk for public data visualisation. The programme's reported resources were €6.6 million for 2021–2023.

Results

Reported outputs include creation of the Barcelona Innovation Coast (projected 40,000 new jobs by 2030), the Barcelona Innova Lab Mobility, an Investment Deep Tech Fund and Deep Tech Node, the Fraunhofer Spain biotech research centre, an in-house staff training programme, and designated innovation-officer roles. Recent developments (2024–2025) describe Barcelona hosting 700+ innovative startups and holding the EU iCapital title, with BIT Habitat running open urban-challenge competitions.

Conclusions

The measure is described as an ongoing guideline connected to other city strategies (Barcelona Green Deal, gender equity in ICT, AI strategy, 2030 Agenda); reported outcomes are self-described in City Council/BIT Habitat documentation rather than externally evaluated.

Implementation

Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes European Urban Initiative ERDF — European Regional Development Fund

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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