Just, Productive, Creative & Climate-Neutral Cities: R&I approaches towards sustainable urban transformation

As part of the World Urban Forum 2022, our project HUB-IN will take part, alongside sister projects T-Factor and CENTRINNO, in a session focusing on how novel R&I approaches can help cities in developing new urban, economic, social, cultural and industrial model that relocalises production to the city and its bioregional context, promoting decarbonisation, reduction of emissions, healthy lifestyles and contributing to climate neutrality. The challenge is to transform how we produce and consume, increasing urban resilience to treats including climate events and pandemics.

The event will host three EU R&I projects funded by Horizon 2020 Programme. These projects focus on the regeneration of urban places through hubs or ‘creative space’ that hold a potential as cultural, social, economic and environmental innovation drivers, facilitating bottom-up and top- down action.

Stemming from the Fab City Full Stack strategy for cities, – Fab City global initiative, being a global Network of 41 cities and regions supported by the Fab City Foundation, that aim to produce (almost) everything they consume by 2054 – the session is organised in cooperation with both the Directorate General for Research & Innovation (DG RTD) and the European Research Executive Agency (REA) of the European Commission.

The first Session focuses on urban regeneration and will be structured around 3 main questions:

1. How can we use the ‘meanwhile’ of urban regeneration to create Just and sustainable Cities? led by T-Factor project, focusing on the key role that temporary and creative uses can play in unleashing inclusive and thriving urban areas that promote the right to cities while supporting the SDGs targets.

2. How can we guide collective action towards circular and productive cities? led by CENTRINNO project that focuses on leveraging the potential of underutilised historic spaces to become creative production and manufacturing human-centred hubs, part of a new industrial revolution that puts citizens at the core of a sustainable transformation.

3. How can we foster creative and heritage driven cities balancing forward-moving innovation and preservation of cultural heritage? led by HUB-IN project that promotes the regeneration of historic urban areas (HUA) using as main catalyst innovation and entrepreneurship, while preserving the unique identity of historic areas and their cultural and social values.

The 3 projects have devised a Manifesto to position their collective approach.

The Second Session focuses on the contribution of the above thematics to climate neutrality.

To this aim the session will discuss how best practices in the previous thematics ( e.g. delivered by the above projects) will help to face the challenge of climate change and contribute to the implementation of the Climate Neutral and Smart Cities Mission. The session will be introduced by the second moderator and international renowned discussants. The audience will have the opportunity to interact with the speakers in the Q&A both in the room and by Zoom.

See full programme of the event here.