Almada: Innovative project to promote circular economy and decarbonization of urban living

Almada is one of nine Portuguese cities selected to implement an innovative project that aims to recreate urban spaces, turning them into spaces for demonstrating activities and livelihoods that are more sustainable and less carbon intensive.

Within the Portuguese Environmental Fund (http://www.fundoambiental.pt) framework, this project follows the signature of the Paris Agreements in 2015 by Portugal, for the reduction of carbon emissions resulting from human activities by 2050. These Living Labs are, in practice, delimited spaces defined by the cities, where demonstrative solutions will be implemented, which can then be replicated in other locations and in other cities in the country and in the world.

The DLLab Almada aims to assert itself as an organized, optimized, inclusive and connected, low-carbon, resilient and more accessible urban space, promoting the appropriation by citizens, companies and other entities of a set of innovative and disruptive technologies and services, that point to a new way of creating, managing and experiencing the cities of the future. The DLLab Almada was designed based on the very particular characteristics of the selected space and the new centrality that was generated following the project of urban and functional requalification, and pedestrianization, introduced recently at the Cândido dos Reis Street.

In the DLLab Almada, a set of innovative actions will be tested and implemented which include the creation of a small urban logistics consolidation center (with a nearly zero energy building approach) that can mitigate the problems of loading and unloading operations and mitigate the current conflicts in this highly attractive pedestrian route.

Other actions to be implemented include the creation of a local currency that promotes economic activity in the Laboratory and surrounding areas, smart waste collection, including the use of food waste, the provision of real-time information on public transport modes which serve the area, smart metering and the reduction of energy intensity in buildings, introduction of solar pavements, and the FAROL (lighthouse) Platform, a web-based system which aggregates all the information associated with the activities of DLLab Almada. 
The FAROL platform is an instrument for operationalization, dissemination and monitoring of results, shared by all stakeholders, including merchants, residents and the public, with access at different levels of permission. It will also include a shared procurement platform, both for local merchants and residents, operating collective purchasing services. It will support the management activities associated with the urban logistics consolidation center and the collection of organic waste sent for recovery, the operation of the local currency, the electricity consumption in the DLLab, and the collective purchasing initiatives. It will also be the basis for the provision of information to the public and will constitute the platform for the management, operationalization and monitoring of the DLLab Almada management team.

This commitment of Almada is part of its Local Strategy for Climate Change aimed at mitigating greenhouse gas emissions in the municipality, reducing its carbon intensity and promoting territorial resilience.