Metro21 Hosts Colorado Springs Regional Leaders
On May 1 and May 2, 2019, Metro21 in partnership with Traffic21 welcomed Colorado Springs Chamber & Economic Development Corporation and their Regional Leaders to the City of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University.
The Colorado Springs Regional Leaders trip is an annual trip in effort to gain knowledge and ideas from other communities across the country. For their 2019 trip, 40 of Colorado Springs Community leaders visited Pittsburgh, PA to learn best practices, challenges and collaboration with the city and academic institutes.
The regional leader Leaders in Science & Technology team visited Carnegie Mellon University’s NavLab where Traffic21 Executive Director, Stan Caldwell, led a discussion about how our Smart Cities/Traffic21 Institutes manage relationships between external partners and researchers. He was joined to Christoph Mertz who described his research projects including his Landslide Analysis project. The team was excited to hear about Mertz's research and the City of Pittsburgh’s work with landslides, noting that it is an issue that they are currently facing in Colorado Springs.
On May 2, Metro21 Executive Director, Karen Lightman, Mobility21 Program Manager, Lisa Kay Schweyer and City of Pittsburgh’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure Assistant Director, Alex Pazuchanics, joined the Colorado Springs Regional Leaders to provide an overview of the public-private partnership between CMU and the City of Pittsburgh. As Colorado Springs looks to build a Smart City, they have determined they want to develop a collaborative – not a competitive – mindset and felt Pittsburgh and Metro21’s public-private partner aligned with how they want to operate their smart city. As Metro21 continues to build relationships to solve 21st century problems, the institute looks forward to sharing best practices with more regional leaders.