The home city of Fiat and birthplace of the beloved Fiat 500 car, Turin has long been the nerve centre of Italy’s automobile industry.
The headquarters of several globally recognised manufacturers also prides itself on having some of Italy’s top engineering schools, offering specialised automotive courses.
This means it is just the right place to build an innovation ecosystem – particularly if you believe transport will be one of the main agents of change in the cities of the future.
In 2019, Intesa Sanpaolo’s Innovation Center, the Fondazione Compagnia di Sanpaolo and the Fondazione CRT joined forces to launch a three-year project aiming to use Turin as a testing ground for smart city schemes, particularly smart mobility.
The duo teamed up with Techstars, a specialist in the nurture of nascent tech companies, to form the Techstars smart mobility acceleration programme.
“The new challenge for the city of Torino is to move from ‘car’ to ‘mobility’ – to move from product to mobility as a service,”
says Marco Pironti, Deputy Mayor for innovation, City of Turin. “The collaboration with Techstars represents one of the main pillars for this transition.”
The development of the Torino City Lab, a designated area for the testing of smart city innovations, shows that Turin is already looking forward to the challenges of the future.
The city is also home to innovation hubs such as Officine Grandi Riparazioni (OGR), along with thinkers and builders who are pushing to create technologies that will meet our future needs.