The July summit was dedicated to the role of modern smart cities in achieving sustainable development goals, as well as how the digitalization of urban economies can contribute to improving the quality of life. The forum brought together city leaders, experts, and diplomats.
Participants included the Mayor of Bishkek, Aibek Dzhunushaliev, and other representatives from Shanghai Cooperation Organization member states. The Governor of St. Petersburg, Alexander Beglov, recorded a video address to the conference participants.
The event was covered by China Daily.
Igor Khodachek, Director of the Center for Eurasian Studies, comments:
«The SCO's business agenda has traditionally focused on interstate rather than intermunicipal cooperation. Therefore, the summit of mayors in Tianjin became a significant milestone—now cities are being drawn into cooperation, adding issues of sustainable urban development and digitalization to the SCO's agenda. The SCO countries are very diverse, but the problems of big cities are largely similar: managing traffic flows, waste disposal, smoothing out disparities in socio-economic development, and creating a comfortable urban environment. For most post-Soviet cities, as well as for many cities in China, another important task is renovation.
The main thing is that such an exchange of experience could allow SCO countries to avoid repeating the mistakes of others, where cities in less affluent countries are colonized by construction and IT corporations from richer, technologically advanced nations, leaving smart city projects burdened with years of debt and concession payments."