The Med-IREN project aims to provide actionable demonstration on how to climate proof the Mediterranean critical infrastructures, across critical sectors, by introducing NBS both in terms of improving climate risk management and sustaining their business continuity to extreme climate change. The project will be showcased in five lighthouse regions across the Mediterranean, each corresponding to a present day challenge, that are aligned with regional policies and can constitute the EU as a global leader in the field. Med-IREN will cover different and diverse types of CI (energy, transport, water, ICT, social) , priority climate hazards within the Mediterranean, which is a climate hot-spot, and NBS interventions. In parallel, the interventions and solutions will be replicated into four more regions across the EU, covering the Mediterranean, Black Sea and Boreal regions. Med-IREN will also provide evidence how key enabling conditions, such as participatory governance and citizen engagement, novel forms of financing, innovative urban/landscape planning and capacity building will support regional systemic transformation nd provide the upscaling and replication mechanism within Mediterranean regions and beyond. A high-end digital decision making support toolset will be developed, integrating data from multiple sources, both in-situ and E.O., applying state-of-the-science models, as well as providing unprecedented visualization and sensemaking capabilities for understanding and quantifying resilience through-out the infrastructure and NBS life-cycle. Med-IREN will rely on the integration of the research output of more than 15 European and National projects, that focused on the (climate) resilience of infrastructures, regional adaptation and implementation of NBS. Med-IREN is conceived as a powerful showcase of the EU twin green & digital transition and an immediate success story of the EU Green Deal.

In recent decades, new planning paradigms have reshaped cities. Urban regeneration has renovated public spaces, redeveloped city centers, and established innovation districts. Smart cities have implemented technological systems, such as transport management, water and contamination monitoring, and energy-efficient buildings. A new sustainable approach, including recycling, renaturalization, and recovery, has emerged in response to the demand for environmental sensitivity in urban planning. These strategies have mainly been applied to wealthy areas to attract tourism and companies, repositioning cities in the global economic framework. However, applying these regeneration strategies, smart systems, and renaturalization processes to deprived areas is crucial. These areas tend to face multiple urban problems, such as pollution, social and cultural issues, lack of services and low-quality built environments, and public spaces, leading to issues related to liveability, functionality, quality of life, social cohesiveness, and physical and mental health. Moreover, there is a growing need for climate change adaptation strategies, which has led to the implementation of Nature Based Solutions (NBS). However, a new pattern is emerging, which considers nature as a stakeholder in itself, beyond the ecosystem services it provides. Innovative technologies such as AI, machine learning, and immersive realities are also emerging, which can enhance the accuracy of information delivery and people engagement. GreenIn Cities aims to develop methodologies and tools for collaborative climate mitigation and adaptation urban planning approaches, specifically for deprived areas, addressing three main challenges: improving societal readiness level and awareness of vulnerable groups, going beyond classical greening and renaturing interventions, and leveraging cutting-edge technologies to enhance co-creation and maximize urban regeneration impacts.

T-Factor challenges the waiting time in urban regeneration - i.e. the time in-between the adoption of the masterplan and its actual realization - to demonstrate how culture, creative collaboration and wide engagement can unleash vibrant urban hubs of inclusive urban (re)generation, social innovation and enterprise. The project targets early stage regenerations in a diversity of historic urban areas in London, Bilbao, Amsterdam, Kaunas, Milan and Lisbon, and provides their PPPs with a unique ecosystem of capacity-building for radically new city-making approaches. Leveraging local coalitions of actors, we will use the masterplans of the targeted regenerations as the starting point to steer collective inquiry into their meanings and narratives, co-create visions of future spaces, and put them on stage via meanwhile uses and experiences. Throughout the process, culture and creativity will support voice and engagement, and help enrich and steer the masterplans towards heritage and culture-relevant innovation and enterprise, and social and cultural integration. Via trans-disciplinary action research, we will keep track of change, and build on the insights to add iteratively new layers of collective reflection and action. This learning by making will continuously inform masterplans and PPPs, consolidating, adjusting and providing new directions of urban development rooted in shared goals of sustainable city-making. T-Factor will work as an international community of practice, delivering an innovative city-mentoring model which will create multiple collaborations between the pilot cities, advance cultural and creative hubs, universities, enterprises and social organizations partnering the project, so as to shape an international movement of capacity-building and knowledge co-creation for the transformative time in urban regeneration leveraging heritage, culture and creativity.

UNaLab will develop, via co-creation with stakeholders and implementation of ‘living lab’ demonstration areas, a robust evidence base and European framework of innovative, replicable, and locally-attuned nature-based solutions to enhance the climate and water resilience of cities. UNaLab focuses on urban ecological water management, accompanied with greening measures and innovative and inclusive urban design. The UNaLab partners aim to develop smarter, more inclusive, more resilient and more sustainable local societies through nature based innovation jointly created with and for stakeholders and citizens. UNaLab’s 3 front runner cities: Tampere, Eindhoven and Genova, have a track record in smart and citizen driven solutions for sustainable development. They support 7 follower cities: Stavanger, Prague, Castellon, Cannes, Basaksehir, Hong Kong and Buenos Aires plus share experiences with observers as City of Guangzhou and the Brazilian network of Smart Cities. Therefore UNaLab results will impact on different urban socio-economic realities, with diversity in size, challenges and climate conditions. In order to create an EU reference demonstration and go-to-market environment for NBS, UNaLab will use and further develop the ENoLL Urban Living Lab model, and the European Awareness Scenario Workshop method for the co-creation of solutions, and the roadmap approach, in this way achieving an innovative NBS toolbox. Roadmaps will be used in all 10 cities, but in particular serve the follower cities. VTT, with a track record in the field of urban sustainability and Smart Cities, leads UNaLab. The UNaLab consortium is comprised of 29 partners across 12 different European countries and three non-EU countries. The consortium is well-balanced, representing key stakeholders within the value chain of urban challenges and smart, sustainable cities (public bodies, research institutions, large industries, small and medium enterprises.

The future of Europe’s rich cultural heritage is facing several challenges due to various threats including climate change, natural or man-made disasters and lack of finance. Meanwhile, global processes have a deep impact on the values attributed by communities to urban areas and their settings. Despite Europe’s common values and creative diversity of traditions, crafts, arts and architecture, social discrimination, based on ethnicity, race, sex or gender and other characteristics persists in Europe, and is one of the key drivers of social exclusion. Access to cultural heritage experiences contributes to social cohesion and inclusion, by strengthening resilience and the sense of belonging and improving well-being. In this view, there is a need for new design solutions that are resilient to the changing conditions and sensitive to local cultural heritage, and to local topographic and climatic conditions. HERITACT will consider cultural transformations driving sustainability and will explore new cooperation paths among relevant stakeholders, interested in designing a new European way of life in line with the New European Bauhaus. To this end, HERITACT intends to empower communities’ co-creation capacity and to redefine the role of cultural heritage in urban regeneration. HERITACT will identify and enhance community-oriented processes and will introduce innovative and inclusive architectural and design solutions and cultural-artistic practices to support environmental and cultural sustainability, and to strengthen the cultural and creative industries through community awareness and policy making across European urban areas of many different scales and cultural settings. Interdisciplinary methodologies will provide stakeholders at 3 different cultural urban contexts across Europe a decision-support system based on collaborative approaches for the reactivation of unused cultural heritage spaces, and/or for enhancing diverse communities‘cultural identity and values.