The common challenges facing cities today - housing, transportation, healthcare, energy and the environment - will be examined at an upcoming summit by pooling global cities' resources.

The G-50 Global Smart City Summit (G-50), co-sponsored by the two Silicon Valley cities of Cupertino and Santa Clara, aims to bring together experts from 50 cities around the world, as well as academia and major industries, to promote innovation and deployment of smart city technologies.

Climate change tops the list of proposed topics, which also includes energy, safety, healthcare, technological localization and research sharing.

Cupertino and Santa Clara are home to high-tech giants like Apple, Intel and Nvidia. Both cities use the "inside stories" on the "greenest and newest" office building - Apple Park - and football stadium - Levi's Stadium - to tout what they said is the first event of its kind in history.

The idea of a "smart city" is to create intelligent and efficient solutions to support city growth toward a more sustainable and resilient society and provide better services to its residents, said Mayor Paul and Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Cillmor in their invitation letter of Feb 7.

Through mayor discussion panels, the participants will have the opportunity to share their knowledge, compare notes with industries and academia, and seek feasible solutions to a variety of municipal problems.

City representatives will also have the opportunity to bring technology and innovation back to their hometowns, and industry players can demonstrate their products to the participating cities and potentially sell them, according to the letter.

The gathering is scheduled for April 6-7 and half of the participants are expected to be from China. So far, five Chinese cities, including the Shunyi District of Beijing, Beichen District of Tianjin, Xuzhou, Changzhou and Nanchang, have confirmed attendance.

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