The Mayor of Pontevedra receives the researcher Carlos Moreno and other speakers from the III The Mayor of Pontevedra, Miguel Anxo Fernández Lores received this morning Carlos Moreno, researcher at the Paris I-Pantheon Sorbonne, expert in intelligent control of complex systems, president of the InTi (Innovation, Technology and Investiment) and advisor to the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo. The event is framed as a welcome event for the speakers of the III RIES18 Forum that is held between October 24 and 26 in the city, organized by the Cluster Saúde de Galicia (CSG) in which the city council participates.

Fernández Lores thanked and appreciated that this international congress is held in Pontevedra, of which Moreno said, “it is an example of cities that are adapting to the necessary changes to become humanized, healthy, resilient, tolerant communities, and with the technology at the service of people ”, therefore, this expert prefers to speak of “smart citizenship and not so much of smart cities”.

The councilor was a speaker, last September, at the Lee Havre International Forum on Positive Economy organized by Moreno and by Jacques Attali, president of the ‘Positive Planet’ (entity responsible of the event) to present his city model there. After Lores’ intervention in Lee Havre, Moreno promised to visit Pontevedra to continue talking about smart, human, living, healthy and resilient cities. Opportunity now offered by the CSG through the RIES18 Forum.

He was asked “in what type of cities do we want to live?” Because, he warned, “in just five years we will have to radically question our way of life in the urban world.” Changes that for this expert go through “to eliminate useless and unnecessary mobility, distances that can be eliminated, work without displacement, and enhance all the alternatives that technology allows us, although in a humanized way; change your mind and use public transport, without thinking that it is little more than a poor thing ”and, especially in large cities,“ use energy alternatives and revolutionize their management in the service of the general interest ”.

“The greatest threat in the current world” 

In fact, he warned, “the greatest threat in the world today is climate change“, and also, he added, “energy management, wasteful and for the benefit of a few“, recalling that “almost 80 percent of the world´s population lives in cities where 70 percent of the planet’s destructive consumption occurs. ”

Furthermore, and obligatorily, “we have to banish cars, a legacy of the last century, a symbol of absurd and even macho status, nowadays totally counterproductive, which literally erodes the immediate and general environment.”

For this specialist, the change towards intelligent, humanized, tolerant, inclusive, healthy, resilient citizenship for all ages, goes through some inalienable needs: “water, shade and air”, since, he continued, “one of the greatest challenges of the current urban spaces is that 80 percent of the air is not breathable ”.

Thus, he insisted, “cities are living communities in which their inhabitants need the aforementioned water, shade and air and, in addition, space, time, silence, which have already become true luxuries.” “We urgently need,” he said, “time for social relations, for interaction between generations, races and ways of life” and, it was very resounding, “silence to avoid noise and poorly managed digital hyperconnection in which we live permanently and that isolates them personally and socially ”.

After the reception, the mayor of Pontevedra gave the speakers, the Organizing Committee of the III RIES18 Forum and those responsible for the Galician Health Cluster (CSG) a guided tour of the city to discuss their model of city in practice.

The III RIES18 Forum

At the reception, the President of the Organizing Committee, Lucía Saborido, recalled that the III RIES18 Forum is an international and intergenerational meeting with which, she assured, “we seek to address the challenges, opportunities, advances and novelties that are occurring in the ecosystem of health at regional, state and international levels.

The biggest challenge of this event, she explained, “is to analyze the great impact that environments, spaces and infrastructures, in this case of the cities, have on improving the health and quality of life of its citizens.” Thus, the forum will present the latest advances, innovations and solutions from the healthcare and health sector in Galicia, Spain and the rest of the world, to make cities as healthy, livable and integrative communities as possible. “In all senses, areas and ages,” said Saborido: “in health, technology, mobility, the environment, nutrition, intergenerational relationships and -an important chapter- active aging.”

            The III Fórum RIES18 program can be found by clicking on this link