Mar Santamaria, urban planners and co-founder of the think-tank 300.000 Km/s participates at the culturtalks of ETSALS.

300.000 Km/s bring together experience in strategic and integrated urban planning, participatory processes and data analytics for public policies, with a common goal of responding to the need for a green transition, fuelled by digitisation and leaving no one behind.

They have solid experience advising a variety of urban agents, including public administrations, scientific institutions, non-profit organizations and citizens’ groups.

Their pioneering work in the field of urbanism has been recognized for its innovative quality and its impact on social transformation by the European Commission (S+T+ARTS Prize 2019), the Premio de Urbanismo Español 2019 and the Premi Catalunya d’Urbanisme 2020, among others. Our work has been exhibited at international cultural institutions, including the Festival Ars Electronica (2021 and 2019), BOZAR Bruxelles (2020), the Chicago Arts Institute (2015) or the Centre for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona. They have also created specific contents for the Venice Architecture Biennale in the Catalan (Air/Aire/Aria 2021) and Ukrainian Pavilions.

Mar Santamaria and Pablo Martinez, founding partners of 300.000 km/s, gave a lecture on analyzing the data of the urban, demographic and forest expansion of 12 Spanish cities during the last 45 years.

The representation of data from various and diverse sources allows us to read the city in other ways, but what are these ways? What can and do we want to look at? Do they allow us to observe inequalities and vulnerabilities, for example? But then, do we have the right data? Data reveal another city and look at its spaces in different ways: can we combine data and maps of active mobility, heat, income or age, public spaces, green spaces, available facilities? Halfway between performance and conversation between people working with data and the city, we want to discover a rich, diverse and complex urban landscape. The overlapping of several points of view will accompany us on this journey.

Today, different research groups are exploring the use of data and methodologies to build models from which to describe, discover, predict or simulate urban phenomena as if they were laboratories of reality. This description is key at a time when we must reorder cities to meet the challenge of climate adaptation. A radical change that also has consequences for social justice, health and care, emerging economies and new mechanisms for participation. Knowledge that, for the first time, is capable of being reproducible worldwide. All these reflections are the starting point for the latest issue of the journal ZARCH (published by the University of Zaragoza) which, under the title Forma y comportamiento: modelar la urbanidad, reflects on this paradigm shift and the challenges it poses. In this session, the content of the magazine is presented in the form of a round table with some of the authors of the articles (among which Maria Buhigas, Pau Solà-Morales and Esteban Moro stand out). Moderated by Pablo Martínez, co-founder of 300.000 km/s, and Sergio García (editors).

Mar Santamaria, co-founder of 300.000 km/s, gave a lecture at Ágata Hub in Bogotá, todiscuss cutting-edge advancements related to the application of data technologies and cities.

Ana Badenas Izquierdo, architect and urbanist at 300.000 km/s, presented the website that pretend to be the global reference in knowledge, good practices and Data around affordable housing. She made a demo of the first Dynamic Atlas structured with the taxonomy of barriers defined by an international committee, in which an user can compare and access in an unique space more than 4000 indicators from global data bases, and find geo-referenced best practices around the world. The platform has stablished global alliances with different international partners to build a new collaborative way to focus on this challenge.

Marta Vall-Llossera from CSCAE, Ruth Schagemann from ACE CAE, Pablo Romaní from Savills España, Ivan Blasi from Fundació Mies van der Rohe and Ana Moreno from OnCities2030, joined the session for a debate.

Mar Santamaria, co-founder at 300.000 km/s, chaired at the Smart City Expo World Congress an enabling technologies session in the congress area including:

- The keynote Urban Digital Transformation through Smart City by Jung Hoon Lee:
The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 has affected daily life around the world, especially in urban spaces where many people live together. The development of various innovative technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution such as Artificial Intelligence has accelerated, and this change is improving the quality of life while leading the digital transformation of these urban spaces. The presentation examined how cities are digitally transformed focused on 'Urban Intelligence' suggesting challenges and the future direction of smart city developments.

- The keynote The Lifeblood of a 2.0 Smart City by Jaime Durbán:
Advance public services, stronger community engagement, use of resources with minimal waste. The growing availability of data increases the benefits of becoming a smarter city tenfold. Yet, many cities are unaware of the pitfalls associated with data usage. In this session together with Milestone, different layers of data, as well as data sharing and open platforms as enablers for 2.0 Smart City successful initiatives were reviewed.

- The roundtable The Emerging Data-Driven City with Chabel Aoun, Ulrich Ahle, Zoe Eather, Sabina Dimitriu and Constance Nebbula:
The value of data continues to gain momentum, as urban data integration projects and platforms continue to be deployed and used worldwide. Datasets, as well as data analytics, prove their value in different fields such as transport, urban liveability, and crime prevention. The session answered questions such as what lessons can be learnt from data-driven cities? What are ways to collect data to make better decisions? What is the best way to guarantee the openness of data while guaranteeing citizens’ privacy?

The first Affordable Housing Atlas presented at the Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid (COAM).


This new tool aims to look into the issue of housing access on a global scale. The approach to the issue is supported by data provided by multiple sources, making it possible to describe the planet on a global scale using the criteria of the Affordable Housing Activation (AHA) scientific committee, which has defined different barriers contributing to housing inaccessibility.

Sources include the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and Google, among others. By translating all this data in a uniform way in terms of qualities and standards, the tool provides a vast amount of information on a single platform in a coordinated way.

In the presentation, it has been shown how the Affordable Housing Atlas facilitates access to all this data to support a deeper understanding of the issue of housing access on a global scale, allowing users to compare countries and cities, and to inform public policies to help improve access to affordable housing.

Mar Santamaria gives a lecture at the Architectural Association Visiting School Semester Programme (AA eXchange) about the work at 300.000 km/s. The projects presented show how the novel methodologies of spatial analysis, cartography and data visualization can help understand the complexity, and how this knowledge can be transformed in tools, observatories and reports that empower decisions.

Approximation to the Collective Spaces of Ciutat Vella.

Mar Santamaria, co-founder of 300.000 km/s gives a lecture at the opening session of the international workshop ETSAV – CCCB.