Cities need to expand in a more sustainable and resilient manner, while improving quality of life and prosperity at the same time. Cities see that technology can help address these problems but lack a clear vision, strategy and the resources for implementation. New technologies like IoT, Artificial Intelligence and smart sensing technology in urban environments offer a lot of potential but often do not survive the pilot phase. New solutions are often too complex or disconnected from our social environment and offer too little benefits for the citizens themselves to succeed. This panel makes a case for an integral approach bringing together the academic field, corporate world, the municipality and startups with the development of tangible and scalable solutions for smart cities at the core.