Talking to elected representatives on economic development
We conducted a series of interviews to Mayors and Town Councillors from cities joining the URBACT network InFocus-Smart Specialisation at City Level on how they are re-invigorating their local economic agendas.
- Dimitri de Vita, Councillor for strategic planning, economy and productive activities at Torino Metropoli (IT) «As concerns the Turin area, the Metropolitan City can play an important role in promoting innovation and economic growth, by increasing the cooperation and coordination among municipalities»
- Ricardo Valente, Councillor for Economy, Tourism and Commerce at Porto City Hall (PT) “We intend to link our competences in urban planning with our work in fueling a startup economy, cluster development and investment and talent attraction, while simultaneously thinking about them from a RIS3 standpoint. This should contribute to providing RIS3 strategies a more tangible territorial and urban dimension”
- Tomáš Macura, Mayor of the City of Ostrava (CZ) “We need a focused cooperation in the main domains of our economy where the gap between the demand and supply of skilled and qualified labour force is bigger – advanced manufacturing, automotive industry, IT, energy. The smart specialisation approach, applied through the brand new Moravian-Silesian Innovation Centre (MSIC) and our own local innovation ecosystem, will be much helpful to face the talent challenge”