Already in 2000, Wellington E. Webb, then mayor of the American city of Denver, predicted that the 21st was going to be the century of cities. Not of empires, nation states or large transnational corporations, but of increasingly autonomous and efficient cities, committed to sustainability and quality of life. In short, increasingly intelligent. Confirming Webb’s prediction, urbanized areas represent barely 2% of the planet’s surface, but they already concentrate around 80% of global GDP and are home to 55% of human beings, a percentage that will exceed 70% before 2050. Promoted around 2005, at the dawn of the current industrial revolution of connectivity, information and knowledge, the smart movement cities has established itself as an international agora of urban excellence. Between November 4 and 6, Barcelona will host a new edition of the Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC), the great European summit of smart metropolises. The event will be held at Fira de Barcelona’s Gran Via venue and is expected to bring together 1,100 exhibitors and more than 25,000 visitors. Among the more than 600 speakers who will participate in these sessions, the presence of the digital entrepreneur and expert in human development Kate O’Neill, the futurologist and strategic consultant Nikki Greenberg, the architect, disseminator and thinker Carlo Ratti and the vice mayor of the city of Los Angeles, Matt Hale, stand out. As a great novelty, the event will host this year a new space, named AI-enabled cities, in which success stories related to the use of artificial intelligence in urban transformation processes. The motto of this edition, The Time for Cities, is inspired by Mayor Webb’s prediction and aims to urge that cities consolidate themselves as great engines of change in this era of global opportunities and challenges. Ugo Valenti, director of SCEWC, considers that the last 25 years have shown that cities are not simple clusters of infrastructure, «but dynamic systems built around the lives of millions of people and our main asset to stop climate change and ensure a better future for the inhabitants of the planet.” Consequently, Smart City Expo is presented as a forum in which companies, experts and public administrations can “work with these common objectives by sharing strategies, technologies and projects” to accelerate the current process of urban improvement. The exhibition space will host pavilions from countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, France, Japan, Italy or Argentina and companies as cutting-edge and disruptive as Microsoft, Nvidia, Deloitte, Bentley, Dell, Veolia and Dahua, among many others. In addition, SCEWC will share space and dates with the fifth edition of the Tomorrow.Mobility World Congress (TMWC), a parallel event focused on sustainable and intelligent urban mobility that this year will feature, among many other activities, with presentations on bicycle sharing.