LUR Integrated Transport Strategy presented at Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona
Last week the three-day Smart City Expo World Congress brought 400 international experts to Barcelona to exchange experiences and present best practices for the sustainable development of cities. Among the experts present at the event, which attracted a 25,000 visitors, was Lilijana Madjar, director of the Regional Development Agency of the Ljubljana Urban Region and chair of the Development Council of the Western Slovenia Cohesion Region, who presented the Integrated Transport Strategy of the LUR – an innovative document in the sustainable mobility field – and discussed the challenges of an ageing population, healthcare and long-term care that Slovenia is facing.
By promoting social innovations, establishing partnerships and presenting business opportunities, the event aims to create conditions for a better future for cities and their inhabitants. This year’s event was accompanied by a trade fair at which 844 global businesses and organisations presented their latest products, services and projects in an exhibition area of 45,000 m2. The event also included presentations and workshops addressing specific challenges in five fields: digital transformation, urban environment, inclusive & sharing cities, mobility, governance & finance.
As part of a panel on sustainable mobility alongside numerous experts on sustainable mobility solutions, Lilijana Madjar presented the key transport challenges facing the Ljubljana Urban Region, studies carried out to date and measures from past years that have already led to numerous improvements to the transport situation in the region. Her main focus, however, was on a presentation of the Integrated Transport Strategy of the Ljubljana Urban Region, a strategic document created through the cooperation of all 26 municipalities in the region, who also co-financed its preparation. This was the fifth international event at which this innovative document has been presented.
In the course of a round-table discussion on the topic of modern challenges in healthcare, digitalisation in healthcare and long-term care, Lilijana Madjar highlighted projections indicating that by 2050 as much as 30% of the population of Slovenia will be over 65 years old and talked about the principal challenges we are facing. One of the key challenges is that long-term care in Slovenia is still not systemically regulated in a uniform manner – services are governed by a range of legal regulations and the provision of funding to finance these services is likewise fragmented. In the coming years, the systematic regulation of this field will be one of the key tasks to be addressed in Slovenia.
