OrganiCity offers a new paradigm to European digital city making. Built on and extending the FIRE legacy, this project seeks to build a strong foundation for future sustainable cities through co-creation by a wide range of stakeholders. Globally, Europe is a champion of sustainable, inclusive and open societies. The digital age enables us to push this position further and to rethink the way we create cities and facilitate living by integrating many complex systems. OrganiCity combines top-down planning and operations with flexible bottom-up initiatives where citizen involvement is key. So far, this has been difficult to achieve. Previous attempts to scale informal one-off projects or broaden single community projects have failed. By focusing on the city as a sociotechnical whole, OrganiCity brings software, hardware and associated human processes flexibly together into a new living city that is replicable, scalable, as well as socially, environmentally and economically sustainable. Three clusters – Aarhus (DK), London (UK) and Santander (ES) – recognised for their digital urban initiatives, bring their various stakeholders together into a coherent effort to develop an integrated Experimentation-as-a-Service facility respecting ethical and privacy sensitivities and potentially improving the lives of millions of people. The OrganiCity consortium will create a novel set of tools for civic co-creation, well beyond the state of the art in trans-disciplinary participatory urban interaction design. The tools will be validated in each cluster and integrated across the three cities. In addition to citizen-centric join of testbeds, partner technologies and enhancements, two open calls with a budget of €1.8M will permit 25-35 experiments to use the new facility and co-creation tools. The aim is to grow sustainable digital solutions for future cities that are adjusted to the culture and capacities of each city unlocking amended services and novel markets.

The iSCAPE project aims to integrate and advance the control of air quality and carbon emissions in European cities in the context of climate change through the development of sustainable and passive air pollution remediation strategies, policy interventions and behavioural change initiatives. It will tackle the problem of reducing air pollution at target receptors with an innovative SME-led approach, focusing on the use of “Passive Control Systems” in urban spaces. Improvements in air quality, microclimate and behavioural aspects of urban dwellers will be achieved by applying real-world physical interventions on the urban tissue to alter ventilation rates and dispersion patterns in the selected cities assessed for future climate change scenarios and representative of different cultural&life styles in Europe. Through the approach of Living Labs the team will deploy a network of air quality and meteorological sensors (both stationary and mobile) and evaluate through analysis and a suite of up-to-date numerical modelling the benefits expected from the interventions on a neighbourhood and city-wide scale for several aspects ranging from quantification of pollutant concentration to exposure. iSCAPE encapsulates the concept of “smart cities” by promoting the use of low-cost sensors, engaging citizens in the use of alternative solution processes to environmental problems. iSCAPE will support sustainable urban development by promoting the sharing of results with policy-makers and planners using local test-cases, and providing scientific evidence ready-to-use solutions potentially leading to real-time operational interventions. This integrated approach will include the development and assessment of a framework aimed at changing the mobility behaviour of people by studying processes and dynamics that lead to more resilient, healthy, and sustainable cities, by bringing together theory from urban planning, public policy, urban and environmental sociology and urban geography.

Hubs of Innovation and Entrepreneurship for the Transformation of Historic Urban Areas HUB-IN aims to foster innovation and entrepreneurship in Historic Urban Areas (HUA), while preserving the unique identity of the historic sites regarding their natural, cultural and social values. HUB-IN adopts the innovation and entrepreneurship as the main drivers of urban regeneration in HUAs and it´s fully aligned with the International agendas for Cultural Sustainable Development (UNESCO) and Cultural Heritage Strategy (Council Europe). HUB-IN will have two main stages. In the first stage, a network of Hubs of innovation and entrepreneurship (Hubs) will be developed in the HUAs of eight city partners and in the second stage, the resulting methods and tools will be upscaled to a global network of HUAs of follower cities. The Hubs of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Hubs) will test, demonstrate and pilot activities of co-creation and co-design in three meaningful clusters with potential for sustainable transformation of HUA: i) Cultural and creative industries, ii) New lifestyles and iii) Endogenous Natural & Social Resources. HUB-IN defines 12 specific goals, that will be achieved by the following methodology: i) Building an ecosystem of interconnected Hubs to accelerate urban regeneration in eight HUAs, ii) Creating value in pilot Hubs, piloting social innovation and accelerating sustainable entrepreneurship in HUAs, iii) Packaging, upscaling and exploiting the results and create collaborative global network of Hubs of innovation and entrepreneurship in HUA, iv) Creating the HUB-IN digital space. HUB-IN expect to contribute to reverse trends of abandonment and neglect of historic heritage in a systemic way through the creation of networks of Hubs where innovation will be the main driver. HUB-IN will also have a direct impact on the creation of new sustainable opportunities for local traditional businesses and for the development of new creative skills and jobs.

EXPAND II intends to support the implementation of the JPI Urban Europe Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda 2.0 (SRIA 2.0) and advance the R&I programme by (1) supporting JPI Urban Europe’s widening activities towards new countries, stakeholders and partners, (2) facilitating the transition from SRIA 2015 to SRIA 2.0 in terms of enhancing formats, instruments, strategic partnerships, and programme management, and by (3) improving availability and accessibility of research results for cities, funders, policy and decision makers. Since transformations to sustainable and liveable urban futures depend on a broad commitment and co-creation among a diverse set of actors, the identified challenge to be tackled by EXPAND II is widening the community and building capacities in research, policy and society at large. In this sense, the project targets Widening Countries in particular with the aim to establish national dialogues and processes, mobilise national R&I communities dealing with sustainable urban development, intensify strategic relationships of urban stakeholders on transnational level and assess national programmes and instruments for transnational R&I cooperation. The transition arena concept is used as the basic concept for widening participation and capacity building. As the center piece of the transition arena the concept of the JPI Urban Europe Stakeholder Involvement Platform (AGORA) will be applied and advanced. Furthermore, the challenge is tackled by professionalising programme management in JPI Urban Europe in order to make research results more easily accessible for policy and decision makers, provide data and cases to easily follow the progress achieved in JPI Urban Europe and its projects and strengthen the programme as a hub for international cooperation. All these activities are tuned to further expand the programme towards Widening Countries and other interested parties, offer information and platforms to engage for researchers, urban pu

Sharing Cities has four key objectives. 1) To achieve scale in the European smart cities market by proving that properly designed smart city solutions, based around common needs, can be integrated in complex urban environments. This will be done in a way that exhibits their true potential and allows for the significant scale-up and consequent increase in social, economic and environmental value. 2) Adopt a digital first approach which proves the extent to which ICT integration can improve and connect up existing infrastructure, as well as the design and running of new city infrastructure. This will also allow for the creation of a new set of next stage digital services which will help citizens make better and beneficial choices around energy efficiency and mobility, which when scaled up will enhance the city’s ability to hit key targets for mobility, housing, energy efficiency and resilience, and economic development. 3) Accelerate the market to understand, develop and trial business, investment and governance models, essential for the true aggregation and replication (through collaboration) of smart city solutions in cities of different sizes and maturities. In doing this, we intend to accelerate the pace by which we make transformative improvements, and enhance sustainability in communities. 4) Share and collaborate for society: to respond to increasing demand for participation; to enhance mechanisms for citizens’ engagement; to improve local governments capacity for policy making and service delivery through collaboration and co-design; resulting in outcomes that are better for citizens, businesses and visitors. These will be delivered by a range of expert partners across 8 work packages.