Seville City faces the challenge of creating a Sustainable MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions) Ecosystem. The available infrastructure, a Congress Palace and Exhibition Grounds: FIBES, has become obsolete, responding to programmatic needs that no longer fit the new reality of congresses and fairs in a post-pandemic and climate emergency context. United Nations Environment Programme considers a sustainable event the 'one designed, organised and implemented in a way that minimizes potential negative impacts and leaves a beneficial legacy for the host community and all involved. Traditional indexes of MICE impact leave legacy measurement behind while focusing on three sustainability pillars. On the one hand, the Municipality has detected physical transformation needs for emerging exhibition and congresses demands, and on the other hand, the host community perceives FIBES as a large, non-permeable urban piece, acting like a barrier and an alien to its spatial needs. Besides, FIBES, a generator of wealth and knowledge, does not currently contribute to the local development of the host neighbourhood.
The innovative solution involves spreading the congresses and fairs activities, currently concentrated in the FIBES pavilions, over the Alcosa Park neighbourhood while deploying a local activity programme in the available FIBES facilities. The project proposes intervening in the built environment, transforming MICE spaces into spaces for neighbourhood use, distributing MICE uses in local opportunity spaces and prioritising proximity economy to promote these new interchanges between the MICE sector and the host neighbourhood and the neighbourhood appropriation of FIBES spaces and uses.
All the interventions will follow NEB, decarbonisation and circularity principles.
We are looking for urban partners that:
- Are eager to move a step forward into sustainable and smart tourism model
- Have obsolete MICE infrastructure
- Want to explore new tools to trigger urban regeneration process