Locative Games are in the process of entering the mainstream, in cultural heritage they can improve access by offering alternative experiences and widening audiences, they can aid in preservation by managing footfall and focusing digital assets, and they can increase engagement and allow visitors to see their heritage in new ways. However, existing design approaches and infrastructures for locative heritage are bespoke and poorly integrated with existing visitor structures. There is also a lack of guidelines on what is ethically desirable in these digitally mediated spaces, and how designers might mitigate against unintended consequences or abuses. This is a barrier to the widespread adoption of locative heritage applications and means that more complex experiences are currently not sustainable in the wider sector. LoGaCulture will change this by bringing together the leaders in digital locative games, in collaboration with some of Europe’s most significant cultural institutions, to enable a new generation of locative cultural heritage games through proposals for design guidance, validated ethical frameworks, and an open, extensible, and reusable set of technologies. Through a set of five interlinked case studies across four countries the project will: gather evidence from the heritage design space for interactivity, narratives, and play; look at how augmented reality and soundscapes can affect visitors’ immersion; explore the place of locative heritage in the wider visitor journey through transmedia and social visiting; and explore how the barrier to authoring and deploying such systems might be lowered. The goal is to create a step change in knowledge in how to design, deploy, and maintain locative heritage games, and lay the groundwork for their mass adoption by cultural institutions by allowing them to treat locative experiences that offer new forms of access and engagement as an integrated part of their existing cultural heritage work.

For decades, heritage buildings have been an example of resilience, but also low emissions and the core of our cities, towns and villages. A building that has no use or purpose is abandoned and lost. It is imperative to ensure their conservation and maintenance by making them accessible, affordable and easy to maintain but also habitable and that is only possible considering comfort as the main target. Heritage buildings represent an important part of our cultural identity. It is time to include them in the adaptation to a new social and energy model. This project aims to demonstrate that it is possible to improve the overall performance of heritage buildings while preserving their architectural and cultural identity. Given that the spectrum of heritage buildings is very broad and those protection laws may allow for different levels of intervention; the project aims to develop a set of solutions that can be replicated in different parts of Europe. The idea seeks to solve the problem of lack of comfort experienced in many heritage buildings where in many cases either there is no heating/cooling system or the use of the existing one entails a significant economic expense due to the need to air-condition large volumes of air. Achieving acceptable levels of comfort is something that will not only benefit the health of the users but will also help to make these buildings attractive places to develop different uses and thus help to preserve them. When we are faced with the energy rehabilitation of a heritage building in which we normally have construction elements with high thermal inertia, the most recommendable solutions to take advantage of this characteristic are usually to insulate the exterior with hygroscopic materials. Unfortunately, in many cases, this intervention is not possible due to problems with the alignment of the street or because the façade is protected. When the only solution is to insulate on the inside, other problems arise, such as humidity buildup.

UNCHAIN will “break the chains”, boosting the cooperation between public authorities and logistics stakeholders. It will create a set of services for optimal and flexible urban logistics operation, management, planning and policymaking, unleashing the potential that technology and digitalisation can bring to the sustainable urban logistics and moving towards climate-neutral and smart cities. UNCHAIN will implement a standardised and reliable data exchange ecosystem supported by a public-private collaborative framework that will allow the establishment of reliable data sharing agreements, break data silos and make the urban freight data more available and accessible. Driven by the unlocked data, an innovative set of 12 urban logistics services will be implemented to optimise the allocation of urban space, improve the policy-making capacity of local authorities and optimise network management and logistics operation. With UNCHAIN, public authorities will improve their data collection capabilities and have the right tools to achieve sustainability goals. Meanwhile, for operators, having services aligned with their own and society's objectives will unlock mutually beneficial cooperation schemes, a key factor for long-term collaboration and the establishment of sustainable urban freight transport policies and operations. 10 European cities will participate in UNCHAIN activities: Madrid, Berlin and Florence as living labs; Prague, Mechelen, Madeira and Riga as follower cities, and Brest metropole, Ravenna and Alba Iulia as peer- cities supporting the early adoption of the results. Also, the well-balanced representation of the urban logistics industry, with DHL and UPS, will ensure large-scale impact and feasibility of the project results.

Meeting the challenges of providing European citizens with affordable, safe and nutritious food and of creating healthier and more sustainable City Region Food Systems raises the need for the development of integrated urban food policies that are able to engage with the complexity of the food system. Today’s leading platform for this endeavour is the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, a powerful global network of learning cities experimenting around, and advocating for, the implementation of a holistic approach to food system transformation. FOODTRAILS, a four-year project led by the City of Milan, brings together a Consortium of 19 partners (including 11 EU cities, 3 universities and 5 prominent food system stakeholders), which will be followed by another 21 worldwide cities, to translate the MUFPP’s shared vision and collective commitment to integrated urban food policies into measurable and long-term progress towards sustainable food systems. Building on the momentum created by the recent emergence of cities as key sites to reimagine, enact and engage with food system transformation, FOOD TRAILS will provide city and regional governments and other agents of change with evidence-based policy narratives, co-designed and verified through the activities of 11 multi-objective and multi-actor Living Labs committed to addressing the 4 priority areas of the flagship FOOD 2030 framework. Using the existing knowledge on innovations for food system transformation, the Living Labs will co-design pilot projects that minimize the trade-offs between the 4 priorities of FOOD 2030 and that can function as an entry point for the development of integrated urban food policies. FOODTRAILS will also establish a pan-European Investors’ Living Lab to develop innovative financial instruments that will attract new resources to sustain the urban food policies developed during the project, maximize their visibility and support their replicability across the EU.