New technologies have long played an important role in building the attractiveness and efficiency of Barcelona as a compact city, offering attractive living, investment and working conditions to citizens and visitors alike. Barcelona has operated as a pioneering city in this sense, in areas such as district heating, pneumatic waste-management and transport systems.

Today, Barcelona has formalised this process of innovation into a systematic process called "Urban Lab" in which new urban technologies and services are systematically selected for piloting, evaluated and promoted. The focus of this initiative represents one of the key strategies of the city, to promote increased automation of urban services – be the waste management, energy and water management, lighting and digital sensing, traffic and transport or environmental management.

Barcelona therefore invites solutions to assist this process of automation to come forward, helping the city continue to pioneer and act as a piloting ground and international reference for innovative companies. The 22@ Barcelona Innovation District serves as a focal point for these activities, offering the most advanced wireless and fibre infrastructures, waste management and urban management systems, acting as a gateway for the city as a whole.