Palm Beach Plants Its Flag in the Smart Cities Race
West Palm Beach doesn't just want a seat at the table. It wants to build the table.
That ambition takes center stage April 14–15, when the Palm Beach County Convention Center, 650 Okeechobee Blvd., hosts Tomorrow.City USA — the American flagship of Smart City Expo World Congress, the world's largest urban innovation summit.
Fira Barcelona, the organization behind the global Smart City Expo World Congress, produces the event. More than 2,000 mayors, tech executives, venture investors, and policymakers will pack the convention center for two days of deal-making, demonstrations, and hard conversations about America's urban future.
The timing isn't accidental. West Palm Beach sits at the center of one of the nation's fastest-growing economic regions, and local leaders intend to make that case loudly.
"We're way ahead," said Palm Beach County Commissioner Maria Sachs. "I look forward to doing whatever I can to further the dream of making not just Palm Beach County, but all of South Florida into a destination for technology and innovation."
A Region Few Truly Understand
Sachs represents a county most outsiders misread badly. They see the sailboats, the yachts, the high-rises along the Intracoastal. They don't see what sits fifteen miles west. Palm Beach County ranks first in Florida — and among the nation's leaders — in agricultural output. It supplies a large share of the United States' domestic sugar. It provides the world's winter supply of citrus. It runs cattle operations that rival any in the Southeast. And it grows those industries with high-tech precision, because the production volumes demand it.
That combination — agricultural scale plus coastal development and a surging tech corridor — makes Palm Beach's planning challenges unlike anything in Miami-Dade or Broward. It also makes the county a compelling test case for smart city technology.
"There are far more interconnected ecosystems than you'd typically find in a dense metropolitan area," said Jason Shuster, founder and principal of Bizz Tech, a smart city technology firm under contract through partners with the City of Miami and Miami-Dade County. "When you're dealing with agriculture alongside residential communities, it requires a much higher level of precision. Mistakes can have more serious consequences — like impacting food systems — rather than just inconveniences like traffic delays."
Digital Twins and the Future of Planning
BizzTech builds digital-twin planning infrastructure allowing counties and municipalities to model development scenarios, stress-test infrastructure decisions, and expose the hidden costs of bad planning before concrete is poured.
Shuster sees Miami and Palm Beach as two entirely different challenges — which is exactly the point.
Miami wrestles with tourist volume, international traffic, and the logistics of a port city absorbing millions of visitors a year. Palm Beach’s residential economy is driven by part-time homeowners from across the country, vast developable land tracts, and coastal dynamics that tie local construction decisions to regional climate systems.
"Simulation is absolutely critical — especially when you're dealing with undeveloped land," Shuster said. "Some development will create major benefits, but some of it, when modeled properly, may actually prove to be a net negative. That's a unique challenge Palm Beach faces."
Global Connections Drive Local Growth
The county's own leadership has been building toward this moment for years. Commissioner Sachs helped establish Technion Palm Beach, a partnership with Technion Israel Institute of Technology — the institution Albert Einstein helped found in the 1920s — operating in partnership with Florida Atlantic University. The alliance already channels Israeli innovation directly into South Florida's research ecosystem.
"You can't really have venture opportunities in technology without connecting globally outside the United States," Sachs said. "Our global profile as a county — as a rising county — has got to be known globally for us to grow. And we need the talent from overseas."
Tomorrow.City USA gives South Florida's innovation community a rare chance to accelerate those connections. The expo's speaker roster includes mayors from Atlanta, Cincinnati, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, and Tempe. It brings in state chief information officers from California, Vermont, and Georgia. Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross and West Palm Beach Mayor Keith James will share a stage with the Knight Foundation to discuss how public-private capital builds inclusive growth.
From Conversation to Implementation
For BizzTech, the expo represents a chance to extend work already underway. Shuster wants to show what it does in a county with cattle ranches, sugarcane fields, and oceanfront condos all competing for the same planning dollars.
"It increases the need for data and a strong digital foundation for planning," he said. "Palm Beach also has coastal dynamics to consider. The ocean environment plays a role, so planners have to think about how development impacts both local climate conditions and broader environmental systems moving through the region."
Commissioner Sachs frames the expo's payoff in three clear steps. First, connections — putting the right people in the same room. Second, investment flowing in both directions. Third, implementation — turning those conversations into real projects on Palm Beach County's soil.
"You've got some of the top players in that room together," she said. "They all have something to sell and something to buy."
South Florida's moment as a global technology hub isn't coming. It's here. Tomorrow.City USA is where that argument gets made — loudly, publicly, and in front of the people with the capital to act on it.
Tickets and registration for Tomorrow.City USA are available now at tomorrowcity.us/attend. The event runs April 14–15, 2026, at the Palm Beach County Convention Center, 650 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach.
