Using urban digital twins, Siemens is creating a “City of the Future” at a 100-year-old industrial site in Berlin’s Spandau area.  The space will bring together manufacturing, research and learning together with living space for up to 7,000 people. The living quarter will cover a total area of 270,000 square meters, with thirty percent of this space comprising social housing.

Companies and partners will create up to 20,000 jobs. The transformation of the district will bolster the location’s competitive edge and make the industrial jobs based there competitive and fit for the future. Siemens itself is investing €750 million – its largest-ever single investment in Berlin and a strong commitment to Germany as an industrial location. By 2035, total investment in the project will reach up to €4.5 billion. 

Siemensstadt Square will demonstrate how technologies from the Siemens Xcelerator platform can combine digital and sustainable solutions at all levels of the city: from intelligent sustainable buildings with photovoltaic roofs to AI-optimised biodiversity monitoring and solutions for electric vehicles.

At the heart of the planning, optimisation and operation of the urban infrastructure is an end-to-end digital twin, which consolidates all datapoints from a campus twin, a building twin and an energy twin. Through the intelligent connection and utilisation of this data, a complete virtual image of the district is created, and data silos are broken down. As a result, errors can be detected in the digital city and avoided in the real world. Potential for improvement can be continuously identified in the digital world and implemented, so that even visionary concepts can be tested and a liveable future actively shaped. 

The campus twin, which was developed in collaboration with Bentley Systems, a partner on the Siemens Xcelerator platform, acts as a digital real-time master plan and brings together all relevant data – everything from building information to planning status. The building twin, part of the Building X software suite on the Siemens Xcelerator platform, is used to carry out the photorealistic replanning of the existing area.

Siemensstadt Square is customer zero for this project. Industrial buildings more than 100 years old and with an area of around 250,000 square meters have already been integrated into a “walk-in” twin without interrupting their ongoing operation. To optimise the district’s power supply, the energy twin is used to generate forecasts in the virtual world and to monitor supply variants. With the help of data analysis, integrated AI optimises energy efficiency, traffic and waste management and enables forecasting.

“This laying of the foundation stone is encouraging. Because it shows what we can already achieve in Germany today – in urban planning and in the construction of modern neighbourhoods. Siemensstadt will remain what it has been for 125 years – a place of new beginnings, a place of the future and of confidence!” said Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz. 

“Siemensstadt Square will be the blueprint for the city of the future,” said Roland Busch, President and CEO of Siemens AG. “The project will combine artificial intelligence, digital twins and other technologies from the Siemens Xcelerator platform to transform an industrial brownfield area into an engine for solid, healthy growth. Net zero will be ensured through automated production and building technology, optimised energy management and green mobility. It will be a blueprint for sustainable growth and competitiveness through digitalisation.” 

“The future is being made at a new location in Berlin. As we lay the cornerstone for the new Siemensstadt Square neighborhood, we are marking the start of an exciting urban development project: an advanced, sustainable smart city in the middle of one of Berlin’s fastest-growing areas for new construction. It will significantly help Germany’s capital city to reach its climate targets and attract skilled workers, in part because the neighborhood will offer housing with a high quality of life. I am very grateful to Siemens; the Senate Department for Urban Development, Building and Housing; and the borough of Spandau for their outstanding cooperation on this flagship project,” said Governing Mayor of Berlin, Kai Wegner.