Mérida (Mexico), (EFE).- With the display of the highest technology and digital innovation products on Tuesday, representatives from 45 countries began the VIII edition of the Smart City Expo LATAM Congress, which will continue until this Thursday in the city mexicana from Mérida (Yucatán), south of the country.
“We will all work as a team, adding technology and innovation, to stimulate socioeconomic and environmental prosperity with viable projects that generate real impacts,” said the organizer Manuel Redondo Peralta, general director of Pronus, in his opening speech.
In front of dozens of guests, rulers of 300 Latin American cities, businessmen, university students, the curator of the Smart City Expo World and Expo LATAM, Pilar Conesa Santamaría, as well as Governor Mauricio Vila Dosal, highlighted the spaces for technology, innovation, digitization, culture , sustainability and trends that will be recorded from Mérida for Latin America.
In her speech, Conesa Santamaría spoke about the complex moments that Latin America is experiencing: “we have great challenges, but the inclusion of artificial intelligence will give us the capacity to advance in scientific work.”
He stated that the event will offer “viable projects and real impacts” to visualize ideas for urban transformation in Latin America “for a more inclusive and equitable society.”
As an example, he spoke of the Workshops, Smart Meeting Zone Smart Angora, Keynote and Inspirations Talks, as well as the more than 300 speakers from the United States, France, Spain, Portugal and England.
“This Smart City will be the bridge between Latin America and Europe, since we will have great debates and important ‘speakers’, such as the governor of Antioquia (Colombia), Aníbal Gaviria, and (the Franco-Colombian scientist) Carlos Moreno, with his multi-award-winning concept of cities of 15 minutes”, he assured.
HISTORICAL MOMENT FOR YUCATAN
When inaugurating the Smart City Expo LATAM Congress, Governor Mauricio Vila Dosal assured that his state is experiencing a historic moment.
“Since 2021 we are experiencing a historic moment, because that year we registered the highest growth in the entity, in 2022 we registered the highest foreign investment, historical number of tourists and the safest entity,” he added.
However, he said that this 2023 Yucatan continues to live an unprecedented moment, since they laid “the foundations with infrastructure, technology, innovation and new policies” for the next two or three decades.
Among the most important projects, he said, are the construction of two thermoelectric plants, the expansion of the port of Progreso and the natural gas pipeline, “which will allow thermoelectric plants to work with more efficient energy and achieve low electricity rates,” he said. .
Vila Dosal also revealed the advantages of the Mayan Train in Yucatan: “it is not only a passenger railway, but also a freight railway and in the sections of our entity it will be electric”.
About Mérida, he shared the La Plancha park environmental project, “a 22-hectare lung within the city”, as well as a public bicycle system and the digital project in various police stations and municipalities of the entity.
RECYCLING PLANT WITH GERMAN TECHNOLOGY
Vila Dosal announced that construction will begin next month in Mérida of a garbage recycling plant with German technology, with which 62% of the garbage generated in the state will be put into said plant and exported to Germany to generate energy .
“This is an example of the solutions that occur between the Government and civil society,” he explained.
After the inaugural speech, the governor presented his mobility project called Va y Ven before dozens of university students, institutions, companies and representatives of 55 media.
The Tomorrow Mobility and the Smart Fest, which take place at the Yucatán Siglo XXI Convention Center in Mérida, also opened with conferences and an exhibition of solutions.
