SGES Opening session
The Swiss Green economy Symposium 2025 (#SGES13, #SGES2025) was held in Winterthur, Switzerland from the 2nd to the 4th of September 2025. The summit comprised a series of conferences, exhibition zone and workshops with onsite visits and this year was run under the slogan of “Cast off for sustainability”.
David Avery (Partnership manager)represented the UTA, and took part in the Sustainable City Development workshop with the title “Sustainable urban development: using synergies for change”.
In the introduction, The Swiss Sustainable building Council, represented by Heinz Bernegger presented their roadmap for municipalities in becoming climate positive.
The discussion session was moderated by Prof. Vicente Carabias (zhaw, Future City Alliance, and City of Winterthur)
and recapped on some of the key learning points from the Swiss Smart City Survey to find the key trends that cities and municipalities in Switzerland are interested in currently.
The workshop had inputs from larger cities such as Winterthur and a small municipality, Aesch.
Both focused on the importance of partnerships as they presented tests and projects.
the city of Winterthur presented projects for sustainable transformation, and how innovation can succeed using innovation ecosystems such as WinLab. They presented examples of housing projects, use of data, 5 minute city concepts as well as for stakeholder involvement and public participation.
The municipality of Aesch talked about projects for community engagement, use of sensors and data collection and the importance of partnerships.
David Avery, Urban Technology Alliance discussed about the importance of real-world laboratories for testing before scaling up, the need for removing barriers, linking back to the conference theme of “cast off for sustainability”, and the importance of focus on real needs and engagement of stakeholders, especially citizens.
