Sagunto brings its sustainable urban innovation drive to Greencities forum
Sagunto's mayor, Darío Moreno, argued for a smart-city model built on data and artificial intelligence without losing the human side of public administration, at the Greencities forum in Málaga.
Sagunto's delegation brought a clear message to Málaga: data and artificial intelligence should improve municipal management without pushing aside direct contact with residents. The venue was Greencities, one of the sector's major annual gatherings devoted to rethinking how cities are run through innovation and sustainability.
Sagunto attended with its own stand. Throughout the event, council technical staff met with companies and specialist organisations to gather examples of projects already applied in other cities that could serve as a reference for Sagunto's own urban challenges, and to explore possible future partnerships.
The forum, now an established fixture for local governments, companies and professional networks, builds its programme around six main themes: the climate and energy transition, the circular economy, the relationship between nature and urban space, water management, sustainable mobility and, finally, the role of data and smart systems in public management.
The highlight for the Sagunto delegation came with the panel "Gobernar las Smart Cities: datos, inteligencia artificial y nuevos modelos urbanos" (Governing Smart Cities: data, artificial intelligence and new urban models), where Darío Moreno shared the stage with two other mayors: Conrado Escobar Las Heras of Logroño and Sara Hernández of Getafe. The session was moderated by Julián García Barbosa, head of Digital Transformation at Telefónica, and the conversation centred on one core question: how digitalisation and artificial intelligence help distribute municipal resources more effectively, join up scattered urban services, and support major decisions in cities aiming for greater sustainability, resilience and quality of life.
Moreno set out his position plainly: technology should make municipal services more efficient, but it cannot replace human contact within the administration. In his view, digital tools provide better diagnostics and more information for decision-making, though the final judgement must still rest with people.
Sagunto's presence at Greencities is not an isolated gesture. It fits the shift the city has been undergoing for several years, moving from its historic identity tied to steelmaking -with ArcelorMittal (steel mill) still a major industrial employer- towards a profile as a clean-energy and electric-mobility hub, driven above all by the installation of PowerCo's (Volkswagen Group battery unit) battery gigafactory within the municipality. That shift in the local economy is also pushing the council to explore more digital management tools, from expanding the municipal public wifi network to gradually incorporating data into service planning.
The link between forums like this and the comarca's economic activity is not just symbolic. In the Camp de Morvedre itself, industrial circular-economy projects already exist, such as the OFASI symbiosis programme, driven by the ASECAM business association, in which waste or by-products from some companies on the industrial estate become raw material for others. Initiatives like this are precisely the ground where the institutional commitment shown at Greencities could turn into concrete projects for the local business community, beyond the council itself.
Taking part in gatherings like this serves a double purpose for the council: showing investors and neighbouring administrations the kind of city Sagunto wants to build in the coming years, and importing approaches already tested in other municipalities -such as Logroño or Getafe- that could fit the specific challenges of a municipality split between the historic town centre and Puerto de Sagunto (coastal district), each with different coordination needs.
Council officials have not yet specified which of the solutions presented in Málaga could be applied in Sagunto, or on what timeline, but the technical delegation that accompanied the mayor left the forum with contacts at companies specialising in mobility, urban data and water management that could lead to concrete partnerships in the coming months. The council stresses that this kind of gathering strengthens the municipality's ties with other administrations and with the business network linked to urban innovation and sustainability.
According to Sagunto City Council (Ajuntament de Sagunt), with additional information from elperiodic.com.