1. Barcelona and its Fabrication City Concept. Why transport from far-away locations when we have tools such as 3D printing that allows us to fabricate locally?
2. Copenhagen, whose pedestrian strategies have transformed their metropolis into one that prioritizes people over cars, and made the city into a place where people love to walk. In a similar vein, Eindhoven was nominated as the best cycling city in the world.
3. Issy-les-Moulineaux and its digitalization agenda has attracted more jobs in media and digital technology than it has residents. It has an open data environment, a smart grid with renewable energy serving 10,000 of its residents, a cluster of artists working together at the digital Cube, and a smart mobility system. An old fort was transformed into a digital eco-district working on home automation, geothermal energy, and air-powered waste collection systems.
4. URBINAT - a European project where several cities are providing derelict and public spaces to co-create new urban, social and nature-based solutions within and between neighbourhoods. The projects must be cost-effective, resource and energy efficient, and resilient to change. It is urban regeneration, using innovation and new business models driven by sustainability. For example, they are building urban farms and community gardens, converting old rail lines into green spaces, and using new concept for social housing.
5. In Kenya, M-Kopa offers rural Kenyans a solar kit at a very reasonable cost to meet energy needs.
6. Wasteless, a company founded in New York and Israel, is helping to manage food waste, thereby saving money and diverting from waste sites by providing good classes of food where it is needed.
7. Nairobi ref:13 is using nature-based solutions to answer its water shortage problem, e.g. moving toward sustainable agricultural crops, using cover crops, rain gardens. Similarly, in Louisville, Kentucky, the community is planting trees in lower-income neighbourhoods to provide better canopy cover as part of an effort to reduce medical problems. In fact, 33 cities and organizations in Europe, South America and China have launched a 'Clever Cities' project which uses natural intervention such as building new green spaces to address social, economic and environmental problems ref:14. The World Bank and the Global Environment Facility have launched an urban sustainability framework to help cities in this regard.
8. Canada funded a smart challenge program, which asks municipalities to use data and connected technologies to fix a problem of their choice. This has encouraged multiple and varied stakeholders to come to the table to talk about how we make our cities more livable and ways to collaborate to accomplish objectives.

These are only a small handful of examples meant to further spur discussion. Thankfully there are many more cities engaged in some pretty exciting and intelligent initiatives.