Urban SDK partner Smart North Florida has joined the National Smart Coalitions Partnership, with a mission to accelerate sustainable cities by bridging the gaps between local and regional technology efforts.

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DENVER, Oct. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Colorado Smart Cities Alliance (CSCA), North Texas Innovation Alliance (NTXIA), The Connective, Illinois Smart City & Region Association (ISCRA), KC Digital Drive (KCDD), The Southern Arizona Smart Region, led by the Regional Partnering Center (RPC), and Smart North Florida (SNF) have formalized a new initiative called the National Smart Coalitions Partnership (NSCP). Together, these organizations represent one of the largest smart cities networks in the country, with 100+ innovative local governments, companies and universities working to advance smarter communities. By uniting these regional networks simultaneously with a generational investment in modernizing America's infrastructure, the National Smart Coalitions Partnership hopes to lower the barriers to deploying, replicating and scaling smart solutions through partnership building, best practice sharing and education.

"Smart regions are the new smart cities," declares Tyler Svitak, Executive Director of the Colorado Smart Cities Alliance. "Without a regional, collaborative approach across jurisdictions, new technology solutions will never reach the scale or standardization required to improve complex civic issues. The National Smart Coalitions Partnership will unite already-established regional ecosystems of civic innovators across the country to accelerate the entire smart cities industry and keep America competitive."

"By coming together in partnership, we can evaluate the best ways to address shared challenges, as well as the barriers that inhibit the deployment of solutions. A natural place to begin collaboration between geographies is how to utilize financial models that allow the public sector to capture revenue and increase sustainable investments in innovative programs. The goal of the National Smart Coalitions Partnership is to advance learnings, build connections, and ultimately, together, identify approaches that will improve quality of life in cities and towns throughout the country," explains Jen Sanders, NTXIA Executive Director.

The success of smart cities is dependent on collaboration, partnership and innovation between government and solution providers, which each of the regional coalitions facilitates on a daily basis. The mission of the National Smart Coalitions Partnership is to broaden partnerships, resources and initiatives that are currently helping individual communities in their respective areas to deploy smart city technologies. As a multi-state organization, the partnership aims to bridge gaps between local and regional technology efforts within specific states and transform them into multi-state collaborative endeavors.

"Over the past 10 years, metropolitan areas around the country have developed new civic organizational capacity around emerging technology. The quick pace of emerging technology demands collaboration across local government and across public, private, non-profit, and academic organizations," said Aaron Deacon, Managing Director of KC Digital Drive. "We've developed a deep network of local and national partners engaged in this work, but with the National Smart Coalitions Partners, we have for the first time a network of new peer organizations to learn from and scale our impact."

The National Smart Coalitions Partnership will be announced at a keynote presentation at the Smart Cities Connect conference in National Harbor, MD, in October, where they will discuss plans and activities for the new organization.

Additional activities undertaken by the partnership will include member communications and education, convening and participating in events, conferences and workshops, and ultimately seek to establish multi-region projects and joint research opportunities.

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